what happened last night

Last night's events deserved a blog post carefully crafted by someone who had nothing to do but blog. Unfortunately, it'll get a brief treatment by yours truly instead.

One of my sisters -- call her Caroline -- is staying at my house, which is why I'm not. She's taking great care of the place and of my cat. The problem is, she can't help me pay the taxes on the place because... she hasn't been herself... she's so ill she doesn't know she's ill.

I rode in and tried to talk her into getting some disability benefits, which she may do, but not because she aknowledges her illness. She'll likely go in (to the government office or a law office) and talk about her "broken" back and all the conspiracies she imagines are being perpetrated against her and maybe some savvy bureaucrat or lawyer will pick up on her affliction and send her home with a fortune in back-benefits. That's what I hope will happen, not because I'm jonesing to get my taxes paid, but because she should have the money and the therapy. I or my father could file for a temporary guardianship of her to apply for benefits on her behalf if she won't do it, or if it somehow doesn't work. There are things we can try. I querried the neigbor's mother who's been through this, and she knows her way around the system somewhat. She's in our corner.

To get my sister's attention I splurged on an $18 meal at a diner for us, but she spent much of our time talking to the waitress. Still, I made some progress.

One interesting thing is, she seemed to be afraid that I wanted to get her into section eight housing and out of my house. It was after I told her that I wanted her to stay that I really started making headway.

Late at night, on the way back to my mother's house, I took an exit near the Mason-Dixon line in pursuit of gas. I was running low, so when I took a wrong turn and lost sight of civilization I pulled over and turned on the flashers. A stranger stopped and offered to lead me to the gas station, but when I turned to follow him the car died in a ditch and I supposed I had run out of gas, but I was wrong. Later the stranger returned with his calling card and $25 wherewith I could fill the tank whenever I managed to get out of the ditch. When my father arrived to pull me out with a tow hitch, he and a cop checked out the car. The timing belt had broken, something the cop said was inevitable. After we had it safely parked near Cal Ripken's driveway to await a more affordable tow the next day, my father said that I had not run out of gas; it was all the timing belt. Thank God. I didn't want to be at fault for that misadventure. Dad is paying to have the car repaired, and Mom still hasn't noticed that it's missing.

I need to write to the stranger who left his card!

And I should not neglect to mention the other stranger who, like my father, brought me gas. I'm sorry I didn't get up and shake his hand as I did the other stranger's. At the time I might have done so, the police were already there and it was cold and the thought of getting out of the car didn't have time to process and bear fruit.