One of those days?

If, strictly speaking, the day begins at 12:01, my Sunday began badly.

The Sunday papers this weekend were fat with ads for the Easter sales coming up, and fat papers mean late papers, generally.  Last week, we were second on the loading list (first time I’ve ever seen that in more than three years of doing this job) but this weekend we were nearly last on the list.  The boss gave me a projected loading time of 1 am, so I got up at 12:30 and called the paper to see how things were going.  The papers were running pretty fast, I was told, so we’d likely load at 1:20.

I figured to get there earlier so that I could gather up the things that we deliver in addition to the papers and so I could empty the trashcan in my stepvan, so at 12:55, I was out the door.  The stepvans are parked at the boss’s dad’s store just up the street, so my commute to work consists of riding the elevator down 8 floors and walking two blocks or so to get to the stepvan.

I unlocked the back door and jumped inside, released the steering wheel lock, set down my coffee cup, and stuck the key in the ignition.  I turned it and nothing happened.

WTF?

I keyed it again and again, nothing happened.  Panic edged over my horizon – whadda I do now?

Ok, ok, cat, settle down.  The ignition key I have on my work keyring has a key that fits both stepvan’s ignition switches, and the boss said that there are jumper cables in the white van.  No problem.

Except, I couldn’t find the *&^*(&^ cables.  Ok, I thought.  I’ve got jumper cables in my van and jogged back to my parking lot to grab the cables from the van.  I called the paper on the way and was told that something had broken down and that it’d be an hour or so before my papers came down.  No problem.

I got the jumper cables out of my van and walked back to the stepvans.  They are parked in a line along the edge of the parking lot, so I had to get in the grey van, start it up, and get it turned around to face the white van so the cables would reach.  It’s dark out, of course, and the windows and mirrors had dew on them, cutting visiblity down and making it that much harder to manuver, but, no problem.

I got the grey one facing the white one and carefully hooked up the cables, making sure it was positive to positive, and then realised that with one key for two vehicles that my task was lots more difficult than I had imagined.  Ohhhh shit.

I had the grey one going, charging both batteries, and shut it down to key up the white van.  Click click click, the ignition said.  Hmm.  Progress.  It hadn’t said anything the first time I tried it.  I went back to the grey van and started it and left it running to charge both batteries.  I shut it down after a few minutes and went back to the white van and was rewared by a groaning spin of he engine…then, click click click.

Shit.

Normally, one of us gets the papers on Saturday and then the other guy gets the papers on Sunday and lets the other guy sleep that much longer, meeting up to distibe our papers, but this morning I called up the other driver and told him the case, and that I needed his key to get my van going.  He sleepily said "I’ll be there in a few minutes" and I walked back to the grey van and started it up to get that much more juice into the white van’s battery.

I reached into my jacket pocekt, where I already had the rack keys I’d be using later and realised that huzzah!  there is a key to the grey van on that ring too!

Now that I had both keys, I was able to get the white one to live just as the other guy walked up.  Since he was already up, he offered to follow me downtown and make sure I didn’t get stuck somewhere if my van quit on me and I couldn’t restart it.

It was at that point that I realised why my white van wouldn’t start – I had left the lights on when I had finished delivering the Sunday first edition on Saturday.  The run downtown should have been sufficent to put enough of a charge on the battery to restart it, but I took no chances and kept the thing running while I waited for our papers.  My number finally came up. and I backed into the chute and shut off the engine.

My 198 bundles of six papers came down, and I stuffed them into the stepvan and faced the moment of truth – would it start up again?

It did, no hesitation, so I ran it around the block and parked it so that we could shuffle the other guy’s papers into his van.  Mine restarted again and off we went to make our deliveries.  It was already past 3 am.

I kept my stepvan running at most of my stops, but at the places where I have to leave it out of sight, I shut it down and delivered the papers.  It restarted fine every time, so I know it was leaving the lights on that killed it and not some other problem.  It was a pretty good delivery run, and I finished in about 2 hours and 45 minutes – par for the course.

The day had begun badly but I wasn’t cursed.  The fact that I had wheeled out the display rack from one of my supermarkets, filled it with 60 papers, and then promptly caught a crack in the sidewalk and tipped over the rack, spilling the 60 papers was par for the course, I thought, and only swore once when the papers went all over.  grrrr

I got home and thought about doing my laundry – the laundry room would have been empty at 6 am on a Sunday, but I got up here and realised that I was tired and that the laundry would wait that much longer, and sacked out.

My phone rang a few hours later with a call from an ODer. whom I’ve talked to before, so I grabbed the hands free set and made coffee and had a nice hour and a half of conversation.  I got off the phone and putzed around on the computer and realised that I was still sleepy and sacked out again.

I woke up in the afternoon and watched two episodes of "Lost". whose DVD’s I had rented from Blockbuster.  Well, those were the last two I hadn’t seen on those disks, so I thought I’d return them and get some more to watch tonight.

I

drove down to Blockbuster and was standing in line, reflecting that the noisy kids in front of me were not too much unlike their mom, who had cut in front of me and completely ignored the waiting line behind them.  It reinforced my opinion that most peopla are inconsiderate jerks, and I stood there thinking my less than polite thoughts until it was my turn to pay for my movies.

The computers shut down as I ran my debit card through the reader.  Damn.  I didn’t have enough cash on me for the movies, and asked where a Wells Fargo machine was so I could get some cash.  If I use another bank’s machine, they charge me and so does my bank, so I had to find the right machine.  I was told of one possiblity and drove over there to find that it wasn’t my bank at all, and that there’d be a $3.75 charge to get my money.  Fuck that, I thought, and resigned myself to driving all the way back to my neighborhood and using my bank machine.

Of course, since I was hurried, all the idiots in Portland got in my way.  Speed limit 35?  fine.  The idiot in front of me goes 25.  Grrr.  I go to make a left turn into the shopping area where Blockbuster is and a train comes along.  The signal stayed red.  No one was around me, so I got out of the left turn lane and drove on to the next place I could turn left….and missed that signal.  grrrr

I finally got into Blockbuster and their computers were still down.  Cash is king though, so they ran my sale and took my money and as I was dealing with that, saw one of my students come into the store to return movies herself.

"See you tomorrow" she said and smiled, and I walked out feeling pretty good – first time I’ve seen one of my kids off the bus, in normal life.  I came home and realised two things – one, that I had gotten disk three and five of the series, not 3 and 4, and that since I hadn’t taken my cell phome with me, that I had missed a call from another ODer whom I had wanted to talk to too.  I left a note on her voicemail in reply and thought, well damn, it is that kinda day.  GRRRR

I left her a note on her OD just as she called again in reply to my message, and we had a nice 2 and a half hour talk tonight.  I even took her, so to speak, downstairs to the laundry room and shifted my laundry into the dryer.

An hour and a half went by, and I knew it was after 1 am where she was and that my laundry was waiting to be folded and brought upstairs.  I said goodbye, let’s talk again and went down and dealt with the clothes.  I see now that it’s 20 to 12, that the day is almost over, and that I have to get up at 5:30 and go back to work, driving that school bus.

It was almost "that kind of day" but it’s been a not so bad day after all – I hope this is as bad as it gets, and that I’ll be able to work on that grrr reaction to stuff in my way.  It has been a fairly good day – in fact, thinking of just the phone calls, it’s been a really good day.  I could live with this.

*****