Teri's Birthday, Easter and Our Anniversary, April 1st, April fools day!!

Talk about the end of days, wow when all three of these come back to back to back strange things like total eclipses (April 8th) are happening.

Teri didn’t want me to invite any of her friends over for her birthday. She didn’t want me to invite them to go out to dinner either. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to celebrate her birthday.

About a month ago she talked about how she’d like to have a stone bath mat in the bathroom. So after years of not knowing what to get her for any holiday, I took it as a direct hint that I should get her one. I found it on Amazon and got her one of I hoped average size. A few weeks later she talked about how she loves Roy Kent on Ted Lasso and the T-shirts that have whistle printed on them. To the Bat-azon, Robin, Yes I cleverly paraphrased an original Batman series saying and paired it with Amazon which is where I went and found two different T-Shirts I liked for her. One with the outline of a face, another with just whistle on it. One came in on time, the other a day late, two points for best effort.

A few hours before we went to dinner Teri had second thoughts about spending so much money. Maggiano’s family style dinners are now up to $41.00 a person and the variety has been reduced. I’m leaning against the door jam between the dining room and the family room, Teri is in the chair off to my left. I look down at her and say, “I’m going to tell you what some of your birthday presents are going to be. Everyone has purchased a gift certificate for dinner tonight, plus the two we have in the china closet should come close to covering dinner. No one will order alcohol and that will keep the bill to its barest minimum. She agreed to go. Dinner for six was reserved. Amanda didn’t want to go because KJ might have gotten cranky and ruined the night. It was Teri, Me, Nancy, Nastia, Elena and Sean. We ate family style and when we ran low on a dish they bought us more. I tried to make sure we left with a large amount of the Chicken Picatta. We left with enough food for leftovers for two meals. I guess $41.00 a person wasn’t that bad. To top of the evening after the gift cards were taken off, the balance was $52.00 or so. Nastia, that crazy spendthrift kid paid for the balance. Nancy gave me cash for her meal and it was enough to cover an okay tip. So the night only cost birthday present money I spent.

Teri’s birthday was on Monday. Easter was the next Sunday and Teri and my anniversary was the first. Easter was the same crew as Teri’s birthday. We had Hama nd a very tasty pineapple casserole.

Sean woke up early on Sunday. Drove to his mom’s house in Orange County, had dinner there, drove back to Rockland to pick up Nastia and then drove three hours to the Poconos to an indoor water park. Teri and I used to go to the Poconos to the hotels with the heart shaped pools and saunas to go see acts like George Carlin and have a good time. That was BC, you know before children. They had a great time. They ate one night at an Italian food buffet. They left in the early evening on Tuesday and were home before it was too late that night, around 9-10 PM.It was good Sean and Nastia got home when they did, Cassie came to sleep with Teri and I and assumed Athena’s position up against Teri to the point I had three quarters of the bed.

On Monday to celebrate our anniversary, Elena was cranky to her mom. I’ve talked about her moods often and my response to her bad moods has transformed from anger to indifference to being overly affectionate. When she is a bitch and mouthy to her mother I will calmly ask her to do what her mother asked her to do and God help me I don’t know why she listens to me. I do get angry when she refused to feed the dogs for a week. I told Teri, “This can’t continue.” I march off to her room and tell her in a calm voice that she needs to feed the dogs. I was prepared that if she didn’t come feed the dogs to be at a complete loss as to what to do from there. At dinner for Teri’s birthday, she sat next to me and I thought there is meaning to that. A big factor in all of this might be that I’ve let her work on the Mustang without constraint.

The Mustang, cars and a reluctant owner

Elena is a foot loose and fancy free girl officially these days. I do not know what happened between them. One day when she is drunk maybe she’ll tell me. You know loose lips and all. She works part time at Caliper Tire because business is slow there. She has convinced me to let her work on the Mustang that has sat in the garage for the last five or so years.

Back in 2017 or so I was driving home from Elmsford when the transmission O/D overdrive light went on, the car slowed down. I managed to get it home. I parked it in the garage because we didn’t have the money to fix it at the time. Now all these years later we still don’t have the money, but it is also a 24 year old car, so I get classic car insurance, it’s really cheap. We got the car towed to Caliper. We tried to use triple A, you know that membership I told Teri was a waste of money several months before I called them to tow my car, the Pontiac Grand Am when I blew a hose on the Thruway. I managed to get it off the Thruway onto the Palisades onto Route 59 before I decided I’d pressed my luck far enough.

The Mustang wouldn’t start so I tried to push it out of the garage. Teri finds out and yells at me,”Your old you stupid old fool!” She didn’t say that, but that was what I heard and ignored. After that she did say, “Get Sean and Elena to help you!!” I didn’t, I don't ask for help ask Nastia about that time in Home Depot. I tried to push it out a second time. I have to admit my heart wasn’t into it. I was scared to let Elena work on the car. When I tried to push it out on a Sunday Sean and Elena magically appeared. I feel the brakes have rusted and the car won’t move. After a few attempts I’m about to give up when I remember I used to do things like this all the time when I was younger. We needed to rock the car to get it going. We rock it, it moves a foot, then we do it again and it moves a little further. I move to the driver's door to straighten the wheel. The last thing I want is to take the mirror off the car. We get the car moving and I realize the driveway is pitched down a hill and the car is moving slowly, but at a good pace and I need to stop it before it rolls down the hill across the street into the guardrail. God is watching all of this and between giggles and out right belly laughs he decides I don't deserve that fate and I manage to stop the car before it got going too fast. The roof has holes in it (a later project) and we put a tarp over it. Use pool clips I got last fall for the pool cover. Opened the door and put the tarp between the door and the frame. Yes, that night is one of the windiest nights in several weeks. The next morning the tarp was held on only by the doors of the car.

Triple A wouldn’t tow an unregistered car, but he’d do it for $150.00. The first unanticipated expense. At Caliper Tire, Elena replaces the fuel pump, you know that thing above the gas tank, when you remove the gas tank it’s easy to see. Who the hell thought to put it there! She takes it for a test drive confirming the car has some problems,it backfires, sputtersand the O/D light comes on. She can’t road test it until I get it registered and insured. Did someone say triple A? Yes again that Triple A membership I didn’t want comes through again. I scheduled an appointment for Saturday. The place is empty, on a Saturday! I’m helped and I receive my plates in around 10 minutes. I drop them off at Caliper Tire and Elena puts them on the car. I think it got an inspection. She does work on it iver the next week or so. Everyone at the shop says the transmission is shot. I can’t believe it. Eric, my brother said it was a group of sensors that one of them had gone bad. I ask him about it, but it has been five or more years, so he doesn’t remember. He doesn’t have a machine to test the transmission and no one knows what happened all those years ago.

I make an appointment to bring it to a transmission shop. I’m almost confident that they’ll tell me it is a sensor that is blocked or is bad or it is an electrical something or other, easy to fix. I don’t expect them to say that the transmission is from a time when Ford made bad transmissions and even though it only has 58,000 miles on it it needs to be replaced. In for a penny, in for a pound, I love saying, but not this one at this time. I love this car, when did it suddenly become a classic? I guess when I went on Medicare, it should have been a hint. When I went through my first midlife crisis and I called it my midlife crisis, like the first World War was originally The Great War, Classic Rock was originally Rock and Roll and was cool! My car and I stood still and suddenly it’s a cool classic and I’m just old, not fair. The real fun thing is Elena has driven the Mustang more in the last five, seven years than I have. She road tested it, she drove it up to the transmission place in Stony Point. They will have it done in about another week. I asked them if they could store it inside because of the top. They could only at night. And yes it poured the past two days like a mother…Thank God Elena went up and put a tarp over the top and rear window. I don’t need a soft top car with a pool. Fun Times!!

April 4th, Jobs and the future happiness of my daughters

It’s been a little while since the last time I wrote here. Life for Teri and I is a lot of the same. I go to work where I have developed a routine that varies very little. I’m in before 8AM, I wait for an owner, usually Chris, to open the door. I go to my desk, I read emails, and answer whatever needs to be and then I read until I feel it’s late enough to start calling customers. Around 11 AM or so I get sleepy and sometimes around well, I think you get it, it’s not a difficult job. I seem to be OK at it and everyone seems to like me.

Now Teri has reached the end point of frustration. She has put off applying for Social Security with the hope of going back to work. She has faced age discrimination, which is very difficult to prove. Just like at her last job she faced sex discrimination. The guy who took over her job down in Georgia, supposedly a cheaper place to work, was paid $10,000.00 more than she made and he didn’t last a year. She continues to sit at the dining room table applying for jobs, getting a phone interview, maybe a second interview in person, asked to sit in for an interview for another position, is willing to drive all the way to Poughkeepsie about an hour and a half away to interview for a job and nothing. I don’t know what it could be except for age discrimination. When I first got my current job and I was bored, Teri said I should look for another one. I felt lucky to have this one paying almost a decent salary. Since my move to another position, it’s a good salary. It’s still a third less than I made twenty years ago.

All of the above brings me to Sean and Nastia. Nastia works with kids, she gets a lot of time off and doesn’t make much money. Sean works with his father and his Uncle at Caliper Tire along with Elena. Caliper Tire does work on internal combustion engines as well as replace tires and all related items. The current state of the industry reminds me of what the milk business was in the early 1960’s in Rockland where there were around 60 milk companies chasing all of the new customers who built the new houses delivering milk to the milk boxes at almost everyone's front door. It also reminds me of the village black smith at the turn of the 20th century. Like the black smith and the milkman dropping milk at your door in the morning, repair shops may go the way of the dodo bird to add another extinct creature to the conversation. And the way I see it Sean will be at the same age as Teri and I were when we first started seeing career disturbing storms on the horizon. And like me he might just say,”ah, they won’t upset my business, I have lots of loyal customers and they won’t go anywhere. That is a statement that is so funny to me because that is what I felt when I owned a video store in West Nyack and Blockbuster opened in Nanuet. Overnight I lost 30% of my loyal business. Sean won’t lose his business, they will just be less of it from each customer. An electric car has less moving parts. (The UAW, United Auto Workers in Detroit understands this too, less parts, less jobs) An electric car has a motor like a motor in a fan, a battery to run it, something called regressive brakes which make the brakes last longer and tires, that’s it. Replacing batteries might be a niche. They won’t need the7-8 bays or however many they have, much less all the workers, my daughter, Elena that they currently have. Not a good future to look at for the three of them.