Tuesday Randomicity: Someone Tell What To Do

Suzanne does these Randomicity posts every so often and I always admire that people can be thinking about so many things all at once. Generally, my thoughts are "I hate my job," "why does the dog need so many pills?" and "how can I fit in a workout today?" and then my internal thoughts have been completely exhausted. But today is the day! I have random thoughts. 

1) What to do about Agnes?

Agnes is our old 2010 Hyundai Elantra. She was our first big purchase together as a couple. She is, however, now a 12-year old car with more than 240,000 miles on it. Things are slowly starting to fail. The fan on the driver's side no longer works, so the AC/heat doesn't work particularly effectively. The remote locks only sometimes work. A couple of years ago, some mice died in the air filter thing and poor Agnes has had a vague smell of gross ever since. We have started to consult one another about how much gas we're putting in Agnes* ($20? $5?) and now we have to face some real dilemmas. The car is due for an oil change. Technically speaking, it was due for an oil change about five hundred miles ago. Do I take it the dealer? Just to some Valvoline place?  What do I do?  The car could use some new tires. But. Do I spend that much money on a car we rarely drive out of town?  Do I bother fixing the fan?  WHAT DO YOU DO WITH YOUR OLD CARS? **

*We have different levels of comfort about how much gas is in the car. I really don't like the tank to get below a quarter tank. Dr. BB will let the warning light come on if left to his own devices. This leads to a bit of friction at times, although I think now Dr. BB will fill up more often than he normally will if he knows I'll be driving. I just vividly remember going to a book club  on a cold, rainy night and realizing that there was only an eighth of a tank in the car and stopping to fill up the tank on the way there and Dr. BB was utterly confused because there was plenty of gas to get to book club and back, but that's now how I do things.  Anyway.  

**We had one car for the vast majority of our marriage. It's only since 2020 that we've had a second car. And it's useful to have a second car. So I don't want the answer to be "get rid of it" because only having one car payment is nice, you know?  

2) "Ghost in This House" meaning?

Dr. BB was out of town last weekend, so I listened to a lot of Spotify as I did things like clean out my closet and make chocolate chip cookie dough*. The song "Ghost in This House" by Alison Krauss came up and I spent a good deal of  time pondering this song. Is the dude dead? Is he still there, but the relationship is in a terrible place? Is she actually in a new relationship with a new dude and she's pining for her ex? Why is it so ambiguous?  

There's a version by Shenandoah and it is clearly just a break up song. I'm not worried someone is dead when Marty Raybon was singing it, but Krauss makes me wonder. 

*Just the dough. I didn't actually make cookies. I just made a batch and froze it for future use. Also, we were dangerously low on butter, so I when I bought the chocolate chips, I also bought butter and I paid $6.49 for a pound of butter at the store and I realized that if you never hear from me again, it's because I can never leave the house ever again because I bankrupted us in order to make cookie dough.

3) Why are so many songs about sex?

At some point it has become clear to me that I have never reconsidered the real meaning of any songs from my youth. I thought "Into the Groove" was just about dancing until very, very recently.  So I was rather astounded when I realized that "Will You Still Love me Tomorrow?" by the Shirelles is about the day after they have sex. I mean, it's SO OBVIOUS if you pay any attention to the lyrics, but I've been assuming it's just a sweet little love song about teenagers. Why am I this way?  

4) Why are feelings always more complicated than you think they will be?

My father-in-law and his new wife have sold the house where my husband grew up, where I met all of my in-laws, and where my mother-in-law died. They are moving into a new house late summer/early fall. I have very complicated feelings about this. I get very attached to places and the idea of never going back to this place is painful. But it's also painful to go there now with his new wife, who is a lovely woman, but who is definitely not my mother-in-law, who was also a lovely woman and that house is so identifiable with her that it hurts to see the new wife acting as hostess there.

My mother moved out of my childhood home several years ago and it hurt to pull out of the driveway for the last time. And this feels just as heart-wrenching, but I don't feel as if I'm justified in these complicated feelings, so I'm just not saying anything to my husband because it feels weird that I'm mourning something that was never really mine. 

5) When an acquaintance is ill? 

Dr. BB's current and my former co-worker sent out an email that he has recently been diagnosed with cancer. I know very few details, only that he is currently feeling no effects of the illness, but that he is supposed to have treatments through next spring and, as we all know, those treatments are probably going to be bad. He sounded optimistic in his email, but sometimes I sound optimistic about life, too, and you all know how that is in reality. 

He's roughly our age, single, and his family lives in California. He lives in a city about 20-25 minutes away. We used to regularly socialize with him, but since the pandemic, I don't think I've seen him once. He loves Hannah and Hannah loves him. 

In general, I'm quite concerned about his lack of social support. Dr. BB and I both sent emails (him volunteering for errand running, me volunteering Hannah as a therapy dog), but I'm pretty sure that's not enough. On one hand, I'm not really close to this guy. On the other hand, he is all alone. I want to help him, not just right now, but in the future.

The advice I see online is to basically just say, hey, I'm going to bring you groceries/dinner/my dog to pet on X day, but that seems really overstepping. How should I approach this? I don't even have this guy's phone number, although I'm pretty sure Dr. BB has it.  (Update: Dr. BB and I each sent him emails and he responded very positively about seeing Hannah and giving us his phone number, so I think we'll make it a priority to go visit him with the dog in tow. "All dogs are welcome in my home, especially Hannah" is the direct sentence, so I think we'll visit, let Hannah get pets, and then figure out what else we can do from there.)

So, I'll take any and all thoughts on what to do with a car on its last wheels, how to interpret songs on my Spotify list, and how to help out a sick friend. Also, I'll take any thoughts on how to make my brain stop cycling on these topics on an endless loop.