As I was at the house waiting to head out to Enloe to collect Katie and Alex, the doorbell rang quite unexpectedly.
In a manner of confession after the week I’d had up to that point which involved a brand new transmission refusing to transmit torque properly and a bait-and-switch for a hire car and a looming date that is just the cherry on the top of the calendar year, I really wasn’t in the mood to deal with some nitwit solicitor who really ought to know better than to bother turning up on my doorstep.
Granted, I’m really not a fan of them even when I’m in the best of moods but when I’m really feeling rather wretched and wondering when all of the negative reinforcement I’ve had this month will finally end and go vex some other poor unfortunate bastard, this is not the time to show up on my doorstep and whip out the one word greeting from an usually much younger total stranger I *UTTERLY DESPISE WITH EVERY FIBRE OF MY BEING* and then proceed to try to sell me something.
Lately, I’ve been letting Mistletoe and Mocha have a go at barking at the miscreant until they finally take the hint and bugger off and amusing myself by trying to guess how long it’ll take them to actually start moving. Some of them seem to like their chorus of barks for two or three minutes longer than I’d have ever imagined which means they’re either truly desperate or hopelessly ignorant.
But sadly, Mistletoe and Mocha were not an option this time so I drag myself up from the floor where I’d been laying horizontally to relieve some back pain and this is the frame of mind I’m in when I’m approaching the door ready to let the person on the other side of it have some performance art likely involving yelling and giving it to them between the eyes with both barrels.
And when I got to the small window beside the door…that urge to have a really good mad died almost instantly.
After all, it’d be kind of awkward to really let your mother and sister have it, eh?
They’d totally surprised me with a visit that I hadn’t realised how desperately I’d needed.
On Monday, I really needed to hear Mom’s voice and that half hour really helped me get through the rest of the day. Unfortunately, the reality was setting in that either the Traverse’s new transmission was completely and hopelessly screwed and now I’m looking at another two weeks for it to be mended or worse, the garage wouldn’t be able to reproduce the problem and I’d be driving round wondering if the Traverse would stop traversing on me again at the most inconvenient time and even more money would go up in flames than had already been consumed.
Needless to say, that was more than a little bit depressing and it was definitely wearing me down.
What a very welcome surprise and more appreciated and timely than they’d ever know!
Pretty soon it was time to be off to collect the kids and unfortunately the Flex only seats four but Meghann didn’t seem to mind being left at the house to indulge her crafty nature whilst Mom and I collected Katie and Alex (who were shocked to see who my co-pilot was!).
We made a quick run to get Katie’s kit for work and all of a sudden she gets a weird alert that there was an AirTag following us.
I’d read somewhere that people were using AirTags to bug luggage and other things and I could totally see a car hire agency burying one in the car in case they needed to locate it quickly.
Yeah, that was a bit paranoid but in this world where technology seems to be vastly outpacing our wisdom…can you blame me? 🙂
But if the car was bugged, you’d have thought it’d have gone off in the two days I’d been driving it.
Then Alex gets the same alert and this time I can actually see it on his phone and now I’m getting really worried.
We get back to the house and the alert finally shows up on my phone so I head out to the car and I’m determined to find that AirTag. Up goes the bonnet and the boot and my phone is waved at pretty much every square inch of the interior and no joy in finding it.
I’m ready to chalk it up to just some weird coincidence (though the tag had done a very good job of tracking us) when Meghann pipes up and tells us that she put an AirTag on Mom’s keys to be able to locate her. I’m sure she mentioned this a while ago but between the madness of daily life and the occasional in-one-ear-and-out-the-other, I guess it just didn’t register that she’d effectively belled the cat!
At least that’s easier to live with than someone stalking the hire car through an AirTag! 🙂
