The second truck was pretty late getting back to the Post Office….and, so, I was pretty late getting started delivering the mail yesterday.
That’s our routine, lately.
When we have all of our mail, I can jam on it and get it all done….and be home at a decent hour.
When we wait on the trucks to bring the packages or mail that was misdelivered to another office, or that couldn’t be processed in time to make the first truck, or that wouldn’t fit on the first truck because the load was too big….well….that changes the day.
Yesterday was a day of waiting.
Anyway….the only reason I’m explaining that is to say that I was later getting started on my day than I suspected I would be when I thought I was going to make it out of the office and onto the road an hour earlier.
My Jeep was leaking transmission fluid….so, along with the lateness of the start, I was thinking about that some as the day progressed.
Everytime that I got out of the vehicle, I checked that quarter sized leak….making sure that it hadn’t gotten any bigger.
I made it back to the office about an hour later than I thought I would, checked the oil spot, realized that it was flowing a little more freely, and decided that maybe I should get a little more proactive about fixing the car correctly.
It was time to do something more than just continuing to buy quarts of transmission fluid.
When I got to the auto parts store, I checked that leaking hose to see if I could see any size marked on the outside of the hose.
Here’s where the story really starts….all the rest was just a long-winded way of saying that the day was already more rushed than it needed to be.
That’s all.
Anyway, when I checked the hose, what had been sort of a steady weeping of transmission fluid, constant and kind of dangerous if left unrepaired, turned into an Exxon Valdese kind of spill….red fluid pouring out of a crack in the hose that had somehow widened when I moved it.
This was all happening at the far side of the auto parts store’s parking lot.
I went into the store and bought the parts that I needed….and called Jenny when I realized that I was going to have to do the repair in the parking lot…and got my tools out and took the grill off so I could access the hose end at the transmission cooler.
When you take a hose off like that, all the fluid that’s in it and in whatever it’s connected to pours all over you.
When you take the other end of the hose off of the fitting that connects it to the other hose that’s attached to the transmission, the fluid from the other side pours all over you.
There’s lots of fluid.
Of course, you plug and hold with whatever finger is free…you watch and ponder in that puddle of grease….you ponder all this fluid that’s splashed in your face….and, after you manage to cut away all the old hardened hose from the fitting, and you are able to slide the new hose over it….the leaking stops!
That’s such a good thing….when the hot red oil stops pouring out onto your nicest t-shirt….and you can get up off of the asphalt and go back into the store to clean up in their men’s room.
Man…what a day.
Between the truck being late and all this hot oil….
Man.
No.
Wait……..
Man!
Man!!! What a day!!
The weather was perfect! The leaves were turning!! I busted my car in the parking lot of a place where I could fix it!! It was dry and nice…and I’d been thinking about how the repair job would go down for a couple of weeks….so when I actually got on it…out of oily necessity…the job was what I expected it would be.
And now my car doesn’t leak anymore.
I don’t want to be a Pollyanna about this….but….maaaaaaannnnnnnnn…..what a perfect day!
I am blessed in ways that, given a slightly wrong twist in perception, I suspect that I discount or miss completely almost every day of my life.
I am blessed.
That’s a nice thing to remember.
What a perfectly oily perfect day.
