Car Troubles

Sometimes I benefit from James' inherent luck; other times he suffers from mine. A few months ago, he lost my car keys after a late-night hockey game. And on Saturday, he accidentally threw away my spare set. My only set. The act stemmed from a good deed; he was cleaning out my car and the keys ended up in the trash along with some take-out bags and straw wrappers from Dunkin’ Donuts. He then packed up the trash in his own car and hauled it off to the dump. That said, there was no divide and conquer on the to-do list all weekend as we had to wait until today to have the car towed to the dealership to have a new key programmed. $200 in the garbage, literally.

The rest of the day, a similar theme. That afternoon, we headed to Braintree for Isabella’s 6th birthday dinner. Demetra made a fat lasagna and ordered a phat cake from Konditormeister, so everyone was eager to get there. Miraculously, we were the first to arrive and immediately shared the car-keys-in-garbage story. Demetra told us that Maria was having her own car issues as we spoke: A flat tire, growing flatter by the moment, as she sat in traffic on Boylston Street, caught in the middle of an apparent Iraq War protest. In a series of frantic cell phone calls, she delievered the news: “My tire's going flat! I can’t get out of the city! There’s some kind of riot!” She’d told P to just go ahead to the party on his own and bring Isabella’s gift with him in case she couldn’t make it. P showed up 45 minutes later, looking like he’d just rolled out of bed, carrying some miniature Uggs and a roll of wrapping paper. We were still waiting for Nana Peg, however, who was bringing the sauce for the lasagna. “Where the hell is she?” Moments later, Peg walked through the front door, ashen.

“Uh oh. You look like you have a story too,” Demetra said.

“The sauce. I spilled the sauce all over the damn car.”

All was not lost. There was plenty of reserve sauce for the lasagna and Maria was able to get her car to the shop, hop in a loaner and make it in time to sing Happy Birthday.

Later that night, while trying trying to bring the kids down off a massive sugar high, we started half-watching “Stranger than Fiction.” In the movie, Will Ferrell’s character is due to meet an untimely demise because his wristwatch is three minutes off. I got to thinking that maybe all of these unexpected disturbances and inconveniences are really blessings in disguise. Fate. Or maybe it’s just mercury retrograde. That planet needs to get its ass direct!