Falling Behind, Catching Up

Somehow last week got away from me, and I failed to record some happenings here.

For example, on Thursday morning the car refused to start again. We waited ten minutes and then it started up fine. (Well, almost fine. Xy still couldn’t get it to start so I tried, and succeeded. Therefore Xy drove to work with my key, which fact would come back to haunt me.) Xy was not happy about the delay. She had to tell her carpool partner to head on to school under her own power. I called our mechanic and also the dealership, but they only confirmed my suspicions: They’d have to duplicate the problem in order to diagnose and fix it. But I know they’ll never be able to reproduce it. It’s just too random. And I’ve chickened out of trying the bypass solution I mentioned before, since I can’t find any reports of anyone else making it work, and it seems like it could make things worse or create other problems. So I am stymied and frustrated, not to mention ticked off.

Also: I didn’t participate in any of the anti-violence activities Friday because I found myself dealing with a different kind of crisis. We noticed the girl had around rash mid-week. Not a horrible rash — a mild one. Subtle. You could feel it more easily than seeing it sometimes. All over her body. We could not puzzle out what she might have been exposed to or eaten to cause an allergic reaction, and it certainly didn’t look like any of the major diseases that cause rashes. No fever. I was inclined not to worry, but Xy was concerned, and then Friday morning I noticed it seemed a little worse. I called the doctor’s office for advice and they suggested I might want to bring her in just to check. I figured, OK, sure, why not, I’ve got the car, I’ll zip over to daycare, pick her up, take her to the doctor and take her back. I’ll only be a little late to work.

Wrong. Turns out I never got my ignition key back from Xy. Damn! So I called a cab, ran over to daycare (literally), walked back with the girl, got the car seat out of the car, and changed her diaper just in time for the cab to arrive. The driver mocked me for not knowing how to install the car seat in his cab, but in my defense I’d only installed it in cars with hooks, not using the alternate seat belt method. Then on the ride the driver bent my ear the whole way hashing through his problems with his fiancée. It actually sounded like he hated her so I advised him to break it off.

The doctor confirmed my thinking: The rash isn’t much to worry about, and there’s not much we can do about it in any event. She said it was most likely an allergic reaction. There’s an off-chance it’s viral, but with no fever that’s unlikely.

Fortunately I ran into a friend from the neighborhood who was able to give me a ride back. But the real kicker: That night I discovered Xy had left the ignition key in the cupholder of the car. It was there the whole time. She tried to text me about it but it didn’t go through. So all that drama was unnecessary.