Roadblogging

We are visiting my family again and I am a little worried about our car. We squeezed into our little Fusion for the trip specifically because it’s newer and healthier than the van, but it is having an attack of — I don’t know of what. Car-catarrh? Would that be cartarrh? It is making a whiny hum at moderate speeds, sometimes but not always when the brakes are engaged. A loud whiny hum.

I heard it once on the way down here and wondered if it was some weird interaction between the new road surface and the wheels. But today I was coming back from taking the kids climbing (of course) and I started hearing it frequently. It got louder and louder. “What is that?” Joe asked. Some kind of tire/wheel thing, I told him. 

I miss my husband keenly when there is car stuff or house stuff that I have to deal with on my own. There is a particular way he says “hm” that lets me know it will all be all right, whatever it is. You would think that “hm” would not be a hard thing to say, but I haven’t had much luck finding a substitute hm-er when we are apart. Left to my own devices it is too easy for me to whip myself into a froth. Perhaps I can unclog the kitchen sink with some help from this banana, I think to myself. 

My father and I drove over I the auto repair place after dinner, and the car didn’t make a peep. This is good news, I suppose, from the perspective that an inconsistent problem is often a less severe problem. This is likely to be bad news, however, from the perspective of the people trying to diagnose the problem in the morning. 

When we were here in January it seemed certain that our van was toast. The transmission seemed to have failed, but it was actually a cheap and easy fix, even on New Year’s Day. I am going to ask for the intercession of St. Thomas the apostle, whose feast day is tomorrow. I am hoping for a quick and accurate diagnosis and a quick and inexpensive fix. Each day has enough trouble of its own, I am telling myself. Borrowing trouble is always a bad idea, I am telling myself.

I still wish my husband were here with his very distinctive hm.