Sunday afternoon, I mowed my lawns. My main motivator was that rain was predicted for Monday and Tuesday (it rained some on Monday, but not today), and with the crazy weather we’ve had so far this year, I didn’t want to take the chance that it’d be sunny on Wednesday and Thursday. I had two other motivations, though.
The first was that I found out, thanks to Facebook “Memories” that I mowed the lawns on February 25th in both 2021 and 2022. An anniversary! Sadly, at the wrong time of the year for my Season of Anniversaries, but I’m not one to shirk my annniversarial duties.
The more serious reason, though, was that I noticed that the convolvulus was making a comeback in The Damn Raingarden, only a couple weeks after I’d (again) completely cleared it. That thing’s been so much work, probably because of all the rain.
Mowing wore me out, as it usually does, especially on hot days like Sunday. Because I was so tired, I never even turned on my computer that day. That meant that, yet again, I didn’t post anything acknowledging my father’s birthday. The truth is, though, that what was on my mind this year was pretty much what I wrote in 2021.
The next day, Monday, began with a boring necessity: Getting the annual Warrant of Fitness (WOF, a safety and road worthiness inspection) for my car. I left it until the very last day, and so, I had to get it completed that day. I drove to a facility that I thought would be reasonably quick and found a long queue of cars waiting, and a long, slow-moving queue of people waiting to get to a staff member to do whatever they were there for. I decided to go to a different location, and my frustration may have compelled me to loudly swear a bit in the privacy of my car as I drove away. thereby kinda trashing my voice. I didn’t care about that, but I felt much better afterward.
At the next location, the line of cars was much shorter! And the queue inside was dramatically shorter! However, the queue of ahead of me—three people at the counter, three people in the queue—meant it was at least 20 minutes before I got to the counter for my 5 minute transaction. Then I spent the next hour and 40 minutes or so sitting in my car, moving it forward roughly every 20 minutes as another car was done. At least the air conditioning kept me cool, and the radio kept me entertained.
Everyone I dealt with at the inspection facility was very friendly, nice, and efficient—THEY weren’t the problem. First, their computer system was, quite possibly, running Windows ME and connected to the Internet by 3G cell service. Also, they only have two inspection lanes at the moment. So, it seems to be their systems and lack of capacity that was slowing things down so dramatically.
Three cars in front of me was a woman and her elderly mother (I assume). When it was their turn, she got her mother’s wheeled walker out of the boot, and they then walked all the way round the building (due to alterations to the building, there was no interior waiting area). Around a half hour later, the woman’s car was stopped in the inspection area preventing any car moving forward. Agents were walking around it, conferring, coming and going.
Eventually, it moved out in front, and the two cars before me went in and were finished, and mine went in. I walked around the building in time to see four of the inspection agents pushing the woman’s car off to the side. I have no idea why, but clearly it wasn’t drivable. I’ve never seen that happen before in the 27+ years I’ve been in NZ.
The woman seemed a bit frazzled, though not necessarily distraught. Her mum was sitting on her walker and seemed fine. It was a far worse day for them than it was for me.
I made one last stop before heading home, to The Warehouse to pick up a few things for a project I’ve been working on for the past couple months. I'd planned to go to a supermarket to get milk and a few other things. But The Warehouse also sells milk, and buying theirs meant I could go directly home, so I did. And Leo was very happy that I did.
A couple very ordinary days, then. Leo and I slept in this morning. I was hoping to recover from the exhaustion of the yard work and boredom from yesterday. Today, with some laundry done, and the dishwasher now having completed its job, I’ve already accomplished a few of those big and small things that make up an ordinary day. That’s good news: I have a LOT to complete over the next few days.
But, yeah. It turns out that I can be extremely busy even when I’m “not doing anything”.
The photo up top was my view on Monday, about halfway through my waiting time.
2 comments:
You know what Tommy Pett used to say,"The waiting is the hardest part"
Indeed. Fortunately, by that point I was resigned to it.
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