My understanding of the term ‘Jonah day’ appears at the beginning of this blogget.

After a short night of sleep, broken by recurrent nightmares of waking late and the persistent impression that my left eye had swollen shut, I woke to find that I had, in fact, managed to disable my alarm and I had, in fact, woken late. I stared at my phone for a few precious minutes, trying to make the numbers mean something else. Then, left eye not swollen shut, but definitely swollen (I’ve managed to get a mosquito bite on my eye socket), I ran to the shower, and wondered if, since I wasn’t sure of the existence of shampoo, water, feet or light, I would be safe to drive soon.

Panicked hurry and a cup of yogurt fix all ills, and soon I was driving to work, encountering horrendous traffic, NPR reports cheerfully saying that every highway was backed up and no one knew why, and phone calls from my superiors asking me to pick up extra caramel at a neighbor store.

By the time the work day was over, I was excited, truly excited, by the prospect of heading home and napping for hours. bump bump bump, whispered the Poky Puppy. BUMPBUMPBUMPBUMP, it reiterated as I neared the freeway onramp. It occured to me that in the vast miasmatic parking lot of the morning commute, I had taken the rightmost lane, not my usual second from the right. I know the potholes of the second lane quite well, but the first lane…it had gotten me at least once. Could anything have been jarred at those crawling speeds? Would I have noticed this rhythmic vibration at all on the abysmal pavement and genuinely ridged concrete?

I chickened out of the freeway and drove to Ryan’s palatial workplace, where he frowned, nodded, and insisted on using his new gadget rather than the powers of the indoor intertron to find me the nearest mechanic.

Paranoia thus seconded, I hastened to the small auto shop, where a very friendly man said the magical words, “tire separation”, thus bringing to the top of my mind buried memories and allowing me to realize why the sound and sensation gave me the feeling of a looming leeshore. My tire:

Right glad am I that I did not compete with these Californian speed demons in their pothole derby with that lurking! The mechanic put my spare on and inflated it, and confessed when pressed that he did have a friend at a nearby tire shop. He refused payment, though I shall have the last laugh when I bring him a frosty beverage one of these days.

After the shortest tire store visit ever (and, of course, a not entirely tiny bill), I drove off homewards. I thought it was homewards. I was so proud, because I was navigating…here in the Silicon Valley!...entirely by feel. The arterial I sought hung ahead on its overpass like a particularly ugly necklace, and I was so pleased with myself. From my first mention of the car problem to Ryan to the moment I drove on four sound tires was less than two hours, and despite the sick yellow tension in the gathering thunderheads, life was falling back into order. I would get home, try to stop the mosquito bite from claiming my eye, and catch some shut-eye. I stared at the red light, an amazingly long red light, then looked around me in incredulous anger as a dump truck rolled softly into my car.

What a day. And the storm hasn’t even started.