Sometimes Ya Gotta Give up What You Want and Go with the Flow

I'm going to call this a story of incredible luck and some very nice people. All in all, last night was an odyssey like I've had only a few times in my life.

Let's start from yesterday afternoon. I'm at work and the auto shop has told me the truck needs a complete brake job. They told me to call back at 4, and they'd let me know if it would be done that day, or if I'd have to come back to get it another day. (Now, this auto shop is near work. The logistics of me getting the truck another day are very painful: ask someone to give me a ride the 25 miles home from work, drive my car in the next day, then figure out how to get a truck AND a car 25 miles home. Alternatively, find someone who can pick me up for work in the morning from home - the closest person to my home would have to drive 1/2 hour out of the way to get me. This is the pain of living alone, in an out-of-the-way place!) So, I really, really wanted to take the truck home last night, to avoid all that crap.

I talked to the shop at 4 and they thought the truck would be done and road-tested by 4:30. So I asked my boss to drop me off at the shop and I'd hang around waiting for the truck to be ready. Which is what I did. EXCEPT - after about an hour of bleeding the brakes, they realized that the system wasn't holding pressure and the job wasn't finished. I'll be needing a new master cylinder in addition to all the other stuff. There I am, in suburban Albany with no way to get home, and all my coworkers gone for the day.

Here's where the odyssey and the nice people come in. One of the shop guys lives tangentially in my direction. He was willing to take me about halfway. Then I called my boss, who thankfully lives about 20 minutes from me, and he was willing to take me the rest of the way. The drop off point was a popular bar/restaurant a few towns away from me. So I had a beer and didn't mind the wait. My boss brought me home about 8, helped me retrieve Maggie from outside the electronic fence, and saw parts of the inside of my house (so now he knows what I'm talking about when I mention things). Unfortunately, the cats had played lets-put-everything-on-the-floor yesterday and the house looked not-ready-for-guests, which is embarrassing.

But, I'm home. Everything is fine, more or less. I don't know when I realized that yesterday was going to be an odyssey, but the only thing one can do what that happens is relax, go with the flow and enjoy it as best you can. A big THANK YOU to the people who helped me yesterday. They don't read the blog, but I had to give them a shout out anyway. Now, I'm off to have breakfast, and figure out how to get those apples down.