Life these days

Relax! My eating days are over. I am not writing about food today – no fancy cuisine, no plain delicious food. My stomach gave up, closed down, nailed boards across all windows. August is over. Your birthday is done. You have almost eleven months to lose whatever weight you put on. Almost a whole year to recover.

The big disaster of my life is my car. No, it is not technically mine. It is my son’s car that he bought for his wife maybe 14 years ago. When he ran out of garage space, he lent it to me. They did not want to sell it for sentimental reasons.   So it is on loan to me and I maintain it because I use it myself. 

It might have been two weeks ago. I sent it to Marikina to deliver costume jewelry. It suddenly stopped on the road. Just wouldn’t start again. My driver had to get a tow truck to bring it to the car company that made the car. It was over that recent long weekend we had. I was told it would take more than thirty thousand to fix the car. Will it run like new? I asked the mechanic. 

I promise you, ma’am, he said. And it ran pretty well for two days. Then, I sent it to Marikina to deliver costume jewelry, it stopped on the road again. I sent it back to the car company because it was still under warranty from the first repair. They said this time they will fix something else that needs parts replaced and I will need to spend more than twenty thousand. I keep thinking, all this money, maybe I should just buy a new car, one of those cute little numbers because anyway only I use the car.

But then I think that will cost at least 90 times more than these repairs. And how long am I going to live anyway? Tomorrow I will call the manager of that American company and talk to him to see to it that they really fix my car or I will sue them. This car thing really has gotten me into a snit.

Until it is repaired I am walking around town. It’s a good thing I now live in Makati, two blocks away from the nearest shopping and eating center. I can walk to a little grocery or a big one. I can walk to the nearest package delivery system and have them deliver the costume jewelry. I can walk to nearly everywhere and if it’s too far then I can ask a friend who’s going too if she can pass for me. Maybe this will make me lose some weight. Make me fit.

One of my cousins is coming home for a visit. I volunteered my car and driver to her. We were going to attend jewelry classes together. Now I have no car but I still have a driver who gets paid a salary even if he doesn’t come to work. 

I also had my fortune told. Can you imagine? I really liked the fortuneteller, who might even be related to me.   She walked into my office and said I had a lot of spirits in there. Well, now I’m scared. Thank God, I know I can’t see spirits. I can hear them and sense them and sometimes even witness their pranks but I never see them, which is fortunate.

I told her about my most recent experience. I was on my way to Calamba and I brought crochet with me. I was crocheting in the car but we were close to my destination so I decided to put my project, the thread and the crochet hook in my bag. I was putting the hook into the ball of thread when it was pulled out and disappeared. Just like that.

I looked for it all around the back of the car, lifting the carpets, putting my hand into the cracks, wherever it might have gone. Nothing. I asked my driver to dismantle everything and look for it. It was gone forever.   “That’s one of your spirits seeking attention,” she said. Huh? And I live alone.

She said I was a human interferometer. I think that’s the way you spell that word. She says that I can look at a person and immediately sense if there is something wrong. That’s right. I have that sense. I thought it was instinct but no, there’s a tough word for it, one even I can’t spell.

But she said I would have a new boyfriend. She looked at my cards and saw a lot of men she claimed had their eye on me.   I said, Where? I work at home during the day and read at home nights. Where do they see me? “Wait for two years, max,” she said. I thought, I‘ll be 70 by then. Who wants a wrinkled 70-year-old?

But August is over and so are my good times. Now I’m back to ordinary life but without a car. I will solve that problem tomorrow.

 *  *  *

Please text your comments to 0917-8155570.