Sorry, I am a little cranky today. Someone purporting to be from a utility company called The Commander and told her that her bill had not been paid since May. I scrambled. It could be true! I took over that responsibility in May or thereabouts and, in the muddle of switching from paper check to automatic payment [and working full-time and keeping my eye on four residential units scattered all over the Great Lake State], anything could’ve happened. Except that, when I went online to check out this particular utility, ALL of the bills (and there are three of them — count ’em) are PAID! ZERO BALANCE!

I’m not gonna go into the gory details. There is some kind of miscommunication going on somewhere and I’m just gonna wait until somebody contacts me. Whatever it is, it’ll get sorted out. [Note to KW: turn on your ringer.]

But I’m cranky and so, when a tweet came in from the local online snoozepaper that some numbskull had crashed a JAGWIRE into a light pole, my first reaction was something like, “three-martini lunch at Fraser’s Pub” or “teenage driver”? I mean, this happened at the Stadium/Packard intersection in the middle of the afternoon.

I am segueing off into the ether here but it reminded me of once when one of my beach urchins was a new driver and MMCB was lamenting about some wondrously wonderful kid who had crashed the brand new BMW (!) that his parents bought him when he got his driver’s license. He had a bunch of friends in his car with him. No one was injured, thank you god.

But. Who in the HECK has enough disposable income to buy their 16-year-old a damn BMW??!!? When the beach urchins reached the driving age, we had two vee-hickles. The Indefatigable (an approximately 10-year-old Jeep Wrangler) and the POC (my loverly old Plymouth Voyager SE. Island Teal with a tint of Lemon). We most certainly didn’t have anywhere near the cash to buy a BMW (!) for our kids, let alone ourselves. Jeep or POC. Take yer pick kids.

The Jeep was most often the choice, if I remember accurately. It was a “cool” vee-hickle with bird and aminal bones and Einstein buttons and old toilet paper rolls everywhere and a STICK SHIFT!!! There is a whole generation of kids who have grown up without learning how to drive an automotive vee-hickle with a manual transmission. My kids were an exception. They learned how to drive stick in The Indefatigable out on the old abandoned Raco airbase when they were, I dunno, eight or 10. It is a cool skill to have when you are a high school student these days and I’m sure that, even in this enlightened day and age, there have been more than a few, uh, males, who have done a double-take upon learning that my beautiful blonde daughters are competent at driving a standard transmission vee-hickle.

Where the heck was I????????

I don’t know anything about the Jagwire person but I hope they are okay. I hope Mouse wasn’t anywhere near that intersection when it happened (it is possibly on her way to work). What is it with all of these vehicular status symbols? We recently bought a new vee-hickle. It was time. We bought what we needed and, because we are BOTH working, we didn’t scrimp on stuff this time. Actually, it’s been a number of years since we have scrimped. We keep vee-hickles just about forever so we might as well buy the top-dollah version in the first place. But we bought the Frog Hopper this time, not a Jagwire.

Yeek! It has been a long day and we are gonna grill salmon and crash. Unless the utility-type person that thinks I haven’t paid The Comm’s bill since May calls. Or skunks invade the Landfill.

Sorry, I’m a little cranky today.

Good night,
KW

P.S. I really do know how to spell JAGUAR. Why does everyone pronounce it “jag-wire” and not “jag-waaar”. I don’t get it.

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