A Serious Woman
September 18, 2010 Leave a comment
Sat. morning: After grabbing some black coffee at Caribou I drove over to the local Toyota dealer for a scheduled oil change. As you know, a simple car maintenance scope can exponentially grow into a thousand dollar tab in a flash (or a clunk). That is exactly what happened today. After an hour-and-a-half of reading my Shakespeare book, the Toyota service man who works the counter comes over to me. He explains to me that “You need a lot of work done”. (Tell me something I don’t know, please!).
Besides the regular oil change, I needed the transmission fluid purged from my system. I also needed my front brakes and rotors replaced (I tried not to take this personally!) and my FOP needed a battery (it’s not what it used to be!).
A thousand dollars later (actually it was $889.56, but in the car repair customer end of the business I always round up to the nearest thousand dollars to allow for “unforeseen problems”) I had had breakfast at Panera, browsed at a closing Blockbuster ($2.99 pre-used movies!), had lunch at a local Greek owned restaurant called Corfu, I had walked past three strip malls looking like a bag lady and then I finally paid my way back behind the wheel of my newly anointed Toyota Corolla Sport. It was 2:00 pm, I was tired. Car repair cost had been draining my thoughts.
I drove over to Barnes and Noble (a second home). There I picked up a copy of St. Matthew’s Passion (only the highlights. The three-hour plus version would be the cost of an pre-augmented oil change.). Back in the car, I dug through the multi-secure layers of plastic packaging enclosing Bach’s mind un-boggling sounds. Finally, finally, I was immersed in the immaculate music. Finally, my mind’s emergency brake released. The dissonance of the morning resolved into a major mode afternoon.
$2.99 movies: With great consumer élan (as much as I could muster), I purchased a few movies at the closing Blockbuster. There was not much of a selection but I did find some films which would pique my interest: A Serious Man by Joel and Ethan Coen, Klimit (Gustav Klimt, an Austrian Symbolist painter,) starring John Malkovich, Red Belt written and directed by David Mamet and Shakespeare In Love (winner of 7 academy awards including Best Picture).
Sat. evening: After dinner at a local Spanish restaurant, destined to become ethereal as I lay on the couch watching $2.99 movies with one eye open.
Cindy Wity 