Wicked bad car-ma

Yesterday we went for a drive up to Armagh where Amy’s grandparents were born and visited the church cemetery where 300-odd years of her ancestors are buried.  Pretty cool.  Anyway, while we were driving about 35 MPH on the way out of town, an old woman stepped off the sidewalk into the street just ahead of our car, without looking.  For the second time this weekend, I was able to channel my inner Mike Nelson and successfully swerve, brake, slide, skid and generally employ every tactical maneuver possible in a tiny Honda station wagon—in tight quarters—without hitting anything or anyone.  The first time was Friday night, when a BMW came at us drifting sideways out of a turn circle on wet pavement, on an unlit country road.  A few hours later, we narrowly avoided running down a $%$^#&# teenager who was playing chicken in traffic with his friends, using his laser pointer to “shoot” at oncoming cars.  In each incident, all parties escaped unscathed (until I find the teenager’s mother!)

However, Amy and the girls decided this triad of bad car-ma was a warning from the universe and said, “Maybe Mom should drive.”  Of course, I took offense at the suggestion.  After all, it was my well-honed, zombie-slayer reflexes and superior wagon-handling skills that had averted these near-disasters! 

I should have listened.  In fact, we should just have turned around and gone back to bed.  On the way home from Armagh, just after dark (they don’t really have twilight anymore) we came to a long puddle in the road and I figured…it’s been raining a bit, there’s a backed-up drain somewhere…we’ll just slow down and stay on the high side of the road—no problem.  However, about 50 yards into the puddle, it became clear this wasn’t so much a puddle as it was a gushing torrent of untreated sewage from a ruptured tank at the plant just up the hill.  No, the police hadn’t bothered to close the road.  The good news, if such a thing can be claimed, is that it was only(!) about 8” deep so the inside of the car stayed dry.  The bad news?  Oncoming traffic repeatedly threw a sludgy black tidal wave up and over the car, completely blocking the outside world, wipers pushing muck left…right…across the windshield in a long, ugly brown smear.  This went on for a good 400 yards, after which we were…in shock.  Nearly blinded by poo.  Breathing poo fumes.  Laughing inappropriately.  Afraid to get out of the car or open a window lest we allow poo to fall into the car.  And on Sunday night, nothing—NOTHING—is open here.  Certainly not the local carwash. 

My first thought was to drive the car into the nearby ocean surf and abandon it for the insurance money.  “Some teenager stole it, officer—and what a mess they made!  I think he had a laser pointer…”  However, during the remainder of our dark, smelly drive home, the window-poo dried in the wind, making us feel like we could escape the car unscathed if we opened a door slowly and made a leap to safety, which we did, unaware of just how bad the outside of the car smelled.  It was…indescribable.  Like Satan’s toilet after bad Chinese.  I considered borrowing a garden hose from the neighbor, but had to consider where the…erm, effluence…would end up with no rain in the forecast until Thursday.  Finally, I poured a milk jug’s worth of soapy water over the door handle, ventured back inside, and drove shame-faced through otherwise peaceful, quiet, stink-free villages until I found an all-night car wash that I was able to pay for before they noticed the stench.  I went through twice.  This morning, we had a man with a pressure washer put the car up on blocks and hose off the undercarriage.  However, he couldn’t do the top of the engine and underside of the hood without a low pressure setting on his equipment, so those remained a lumpy, mottled brown until I tackled them with a spray bottle full of holy water I requested from the parish priest.

The Irish water bureau has promised to “look into it.”