As I walked down the stairs in the back of the office, my mind was on my destination. I had an appointment to talk to a couple of acquaintances about a story I was working on for an upcoming edition.

However, as I reached the asphalt and felt the chill air, I looked around for just a moment, puzzled. I couldn’t find my truck anywhere.

If my truck were a little import, I might could understand. But my truck is a big white four-wheel-drive, extended cab long bed. It’s hard enough to get it into a parking space, let alone try to find one to hide it in.

As my mind raced through the earlier trip, I distinctly remembered parking behind the office. Sometimes I park on Main Street when I’m just zipping through the door to grab something and back out, but not for an extended period; so I knew it wouldn’t be there.

Hmmm. Then, as I looked around the parking lot, I saw a dark blue vehicle that looked somewhat familiar. That’s when I remembered, I had driven the van to work, not the truck.

I’d been driving the truck the day before, but it was full of tools that day and I didn’t have time to unload them all before coming to the office. I don’t like riding around with all my tools in tow if I’m leaving the truck in a public parking area.

I felt like whacking myself in the forehead, but I just went on about my business.

To mount somewhat of a defense, I might note here that I usually don’t drive the van, the newest vehicle in the fleet. I have two older and uglier vehicles in which I’m usually seen. Besides, if one’s likely to break down, I’m probably the only driver in the house who could even stand a chance of fixing it on the roadside. Not that it’s a good chance, but a slim chance is better than none. I changed a tire once and I’m really handy with jumper cables.

I’m not a total idiot when it comes to mechanic work, but I’m not far from it. I once put the top of an engine back together after having the heads shaved, only to realize I couldn’t figure out how to mount the brackets on the front of the motor that hold the alternator and such. Since I had a book with the torque settings and a torque wrench, I did manage to get the rest of it back together, but I also had to have help with the timing and setting the points and carburetor.

That was my last giant mechanical undertaking. I had put all the bolts and brackets in sandwich bags, each labeled with a magic marker.

I may have looked stupid, but I had all my parts.

Since this was in the days before digital cameras or cell phones, I didn’t get pictures of everything. I would now. Anyway, I was in the parking lot, not rebuilding an engine, but trying to find my vehicle. Actually, I had just found it.

This illustrates one of those moments in time when a mind tends to get out of kilter, just enough to cause problems. I’ve been running so hard lately, I wouldn’t be surprised if I came around a corner somewhere and bumped into myself. I’ve been moving from one house to another and still haven’t completely emptied the final boxes from the old house. In addition, I’ve been trying to get the new renters settled in to the other house in Piney Creek, which needed a bit of minor work.

The fellow who had been living there had a health problem and was unable to move his things. I moved them into storage for him so the new tenants could get started moving.

The repairs, as I said, were fairly minor. What’s minor? Well, the toilet was clogged up and the exhaust vent wasn’t working (a bad combination, to be sure). After trying a plunger, a pipe snake and everything I could come up with short of dynamite, I did manage to get the water out so I could remove the toilet.

When I pulled the toilet, I found the ends of one of those bristled cleaning brushes in the bottom of it. No doubt it would have been hard to get much past that.

I then had to get back to town to get more bolts. The original ones wouldn’t work anymore because they had rusted to the point that they broke off when I tried to remove the nuts.

I also needed to run a new line for the ice maker and fix a minor leak on a washing machine line.

I did get the washing machine fixed, but not the ice maker. I had picked up the wrong part at the hardware store. The shutoff valve was the wrong size for the flexible line to the ice maker. I added the shutoff valve to my bucket of stuff that I tend to need every time I find myself working on another house—or the same one again.

All the while, I still have a floor that isn’t installed and a few walls that remain unpainted at my own house. Did I mention I still haven’t taken the remainder of the stuff out of the old house? The washer and dryer and freezer are still there, which leaves the option of driving back and forth to do laundry.

With the freezer on the refrigerator, there’s no shortage of frozen food. Even so, it’s time to finalize the move. I managed to get out most of my tools from storage—including the ones in the truck—mainly because I’ve had to use them on these last two jobs. Right now I’m figuring I could get the moving and fixing finished by May, but I’d have to quantify that with a "May-be."