I posted the following note in our building’s basement garage this afternoon after sweeping up some plaster.

Cher Neighbors:

You may notice the new hole in the wall. If you happen to walk by our car on the street, you may notice the right side-view mirror hanging off the side of the car.

Yes, there is a connection between the two.

Rest assured we will pay for the repairs to the wall (it shouldn’t come out of the common fund) and we will purchase a smaller car when we return from California in the spring of 2011 (which will hopefully reduce the number of occasions we have to apologize for damage to the garage).

Sincerely,
–Jonathan (for App #2)

I haven’t had a dizzy spell since Saturday, so I decided (after consulting with Carrie) to take the car for a spin. I had a little retail therapy in mind for the afternoon and wanted to pick up some more onion bagels from Fairmount, as they are one of the breakfast foods that taste more or less like how I remember it tasting. The thing is, our car is this hulking Dodge Intrepid we bought in Pittsburgh in 2000, and our garage isn’t really designed for such a big car. We’ve scraped both back doors turning the corner to come in from the alley, and there’s a whole set of “tricks” to getting up the incline to the exit and backing out. When we return from sabbatical, we intend to purchase a smaller car, as this one was always on a 10-year plan. But today, I didn’t even make it out of the garage without screwing up. The passenger side mirror is now hanging by its cable and there’s a big hole in the plaster.

Was it an error in judgment after not driving at all for 6 weeks? Is my sense of distance off? Is it that it’s harder to turn my neck to the right? As with everything else that’s part of recovery, nothing is simply explainable by a single factor. (Both of us have come close to doing that before, so it’s theoretically an error I could have made pre-cancer.) Still, when I called Carrie to tell her the news, she said something like “how about I keep driving for awhile?” I think I’ll let her.

In case you’re wondering, once out of the garage, I successfully navigated my way around and did pick up the bagels. I had no success on the retail therapy end but that’s how it goes sometimes. I don’t think I was otherwise a threat to public safety, and I don’t really use the passenger side view mirror anyway, so I hardly noticed it. . . .