Sounds like something you would find in a Yoga class or maybe Pilates. 

If not, a music studio surely.

NOPE

A little story.....

About three weeks ago, a shiny yellow spot began to glow on the dashboard of my car. I'd never seen anything like it in the twelve years that I have owned this vehicle. So, H being unemployed, still, drove my Buddy to the dealership garage. I hate going in there for service. They always cost big money, much bigger than taking your vehicle to an independent garage. But it's a computer thing and "his guy", Hubby says, does not have the proper computer. Mechanic hooks Buddy up to the machine and begins to diagnose the yellow spot disease. At first, nothing shows up. Machine says Buddy is fine. But Mechanic is not convinced. Yellow spot disease is always serious says he and spends the next two days poking, prodding and invasively exploring the tender undersides of Buddy after which Mechanic announces that he may have found $omething. At the end of day four standing amidst the scattered remnants of Buddy's front end, Mechanic confirms: Terminal Tranie Degenerative Syndrome. Considering that the weekend interrupted this whole process, I have now been Buddy-less nearly a week.

For the remainder of that week and greater part of the next my Buddy endured the humiliation of front end exposure while the dealership and Mechanic scourered the countryside for "parts". For goodness sake, it's a Taurus... only the most popular and most sold vehicle that Ford has had for decades... AND you are the DEALERSHIP. Don't you yahoos have a parts inventory!!! Bah. Still they had Buddy back to me before Christmas Eve. All I can say is that Santa came early to that dealership this year. Buddy's miraculous cure cost big money. The kind of big that has your fingers cramping and your eyes tearing as you pay the bill. I mean, I'm still not convinced that the repair was not more than the Blue Book value. Waiting for a Christmas present from me? Gimme a call. I'll come collect you and take you for a ride in Buddy.

Anyways.....

I told you all that to tell you this. H takes Buddy out of the garage to bring me to work on my first day back after Christmas. I'm hearing a little knock, knock noise. I say to H, "Sounds like the engine is knocking. Do you think Mechanic messed up reassembling Buddy's innards?" "That sounds more like a problem with the exhaust", says he. Now, I'm not one to gently and graciously spend big money. I tend to get grouchy if I suspect that more big money is going to be spent fixing an problem caused by the fixing of a former problem. Next day the knock, knock is sounding more like a putt, putt. Still H grits his teeth and drives on. The next day I refuse to drive Buddy instead absconding with the beloved F-150. Then Friday morning H drives me to work. Buddy now sounds like a souped up lawn tractor at the County Fair. Once again I grumble and ask him to take this d*mned car, no longer MY Buddy, to a local muffler shop. Surely they will be able to deal with a ruptured exhaust system. (Intentionally sabotaged in my opinion) I used the ultimate threat of driving this d*mned car back to the dealership and having a hopefully polite conversation with the service manager and idiot Mechanic, to boot. 

Thankfully, the muffler shop is one of those that will inspect your major components, exhaust, brakes, and items needed to pass your yearly Car Inspection, for FREE. The shop gave my Buddy a clean bill of health.

AND

a 16mm impact socket found tucked up in the front end resting on the "harmonic balancer".

Is that anything like an "inertial damper".

I went ballistic. Good thing hubby dealt with it. I wanted Mechanic's head as a hood ornament. H said everybody makes mistakes. I'm so blessed that H is such a level headed guy. Thanks to him, I will not be spending New Year in the hooscow. (County lockup, to the rest of you) 

Mama would sing when she was happy. I know my younger siblings may not believe this. Mama was not always happy. In fact, there were periods in her/our lives where happiness was scarce. It wasn't that Mama was particularly sad. It was more the absence of emotion. The simple act of living consumed joy.

Late at night we could hear her. Little snippets of some hummed melody. Probably not a song at all, just the bubbling of contentment rising to the surface. After a while, a tune would become recognizable. Occasionally words would escape and little phrases of some remembered song. A private pleasure indulged in only when she felt safe and alone.

And although her children were her life and love, it was the rare occasion when she would find herself overcome with the need to smile and then eventually break into song in our presence. Elvis and Sinatra were her guilty obsessions. But there were times when even they could not coax her happy hum forth. 

Christmas was the exception. On one hand she would would bemoan the fact the the holidays existed. Verbally she would insist that she was not fond of and at times hated the holidays; an impossible concept for us young ones to comprehend. What did we know of the day to day struggle to survive. 

Yet we could feel her conflict. 

Until Christmas time approached. Right after Thanksgiving she would begin to hum Christmas Carols. Soon it would evolve into full-throated song. She had a lovely voice; strong, vibrant, holding the promise of a much better day. It was required that all the children in grades seven and eight in my tiny parochial school sing in the choir. Absolutely required... no if's, ands or buts. The nuns would drag us out to "perform" at all parish events from the Festa to the Spagehetti Dinner (O Sole Mio) and two Sundays a month. Our crowning glory was the Christmas Pageant/Concert held in the school's basement cafeteria.

Sister Two and Sister Three and I would sing our hearts out in the kitchen each night as we three conscripts sang "We Three Kings" in three part harmony (sic) until our heads ached and our neighbors' ears bled. It was then that Mama could no longer resist.

And Mama would sing; a loud, strong, soprano to our alto. I think she was a diva in a previous life. She was four foot almost eleven, but her voice was seven foot eight. Pounding, piercing, powerful, proud. Our Mama. Who would have thought. Carol after Hymn...  Day after day....  She knew all the words by heart... She was amazing; if only for the season. The New Year brought silence. And we would have to settle for snippets of song and moments of melody, hummed in the last hours of the night.

Time and age have added understanding to my youthful ignorance. We were poor, then. We didn't know it. My Dad drank, we didn't know it. Disappointment was a constant burden that my loving stoic mother was forced to shoulder. She never unloaded it on us. She was the keeper of secrets, dark and desperate. She never let the skeletons out of the closet.

My mama would sing.

I can still hear her voice in the last moments of night as I drop off to sleep.

My mama would sing.

I can still hear her voice in the semi-dreams of first wakefulness in the early morning.

My mama would sing.

So contrary to my usual habit.... I left something to the last minute.

An online class that I needed to recert.  It needed to be done today. Bah. Luckily I had schlepped my laptop to work with me, "just in case". No, not to Facebook.... the Barracuda eats that up before it leaves the server. They pretty much want to guarantee that no employee ever have any fun online even on their own dime or their own harddrive. Not usually a problem except for the tiny issue of having to print my updated certificate. I can access the WiFi but not the printer from my laptop because we are not allowed to "tie in" attach a UBS cable, thumbdrive, anything whatever to the network (ancient juryrigged system).

So there I sat with my desktop work computer trying it's best to crowd out my laptop... Did I mention that my desk was probably a cast off executive desk; from the 1930's.. wood drawers and those handy dandy pull out wood shelves. But definately NOT set up to have a key board and monitor on it. You know the type, all the cables have to track across the desktop, and everything plunked smack dab in the middle of the desk top. Add to that a telephone, adding machine, in and out trays, etc. I'm left with a patch of ancient black mystery material the size of a large postcard on which to process my paperwork, that's when I'm willing to do the stiff arms stretched out over and frameing my invoices in a vain attempt to read, type and calculate at the same time. 

Well, then, you say; use your desktop...silly man You don't know how dedicated this place is to the "no fun" rule.There I sat with a wireless laptop with no printer access and a desktop comp connected to a printer but lacking a sound card and speakers. God forbid any itune or YouTube slip through. Wait, no YouTube... the Barracuda eats that too. 

Did I mention the class was in an audio video format.  So I did the class on my laptop during my lunch hour and signed on my work comp to print the certificate. Remember I couldn't transfer it to a stick (not allowed) or email a copy (the class program was not set up to allow that choice) Oh brother......

I've never expected to breeze through life without difficulties.  It's a cliche, I know, but it's so true... we were taught that when others said "Why ME?", we were to say, "Why Not?"  Looking back I can see how I developed into a steadfast pragmatist. Although I grew up happy in the midst of turmoil, we (my siblings and I) learned to deal.

I'm not a true pessimist, I don't expect everything to be negative; I'm just not surprised when negative things happen. What others see as a steadfast calmness in the face of chaos is simply an inbred and well formed fatalist view of life in general.

I knew life wasn't fair long before my 10th birthday. 

I'm not going to dwell on my childhood, except to say that not much has changed in 40+ years. You'd think I'd be used to disappointment and pain, the frustration of random acts of God and man detouring at best, devouring at worst, the well made plans of mice and (wo)men.

Today I'm having an uncharacteristically difficult time getting from "ME" to "NOT".

But I will, no doubt. Time and tears.....