You know those days when you wake up in the morning, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, you have all your homework done, all your bills are paid, there's food in the fridge, your room is clean and you know you're day is going to be great just...because!.....and then something you totally couldn't imagine happening comes right around and slaps you in the face?...Yep, this is the day I had a few days ago.
While I was getting ready for school on Thursday morning, one of my roomates knocked on my door. "Do you know that you have a flat tire?"...."WHAT?" Sure enough, haha, he was right. What made it worse was that I had no idea how that had happened (looks really cool in front of your roomate to have no clue how your tire blew, ha..ya), but there was a pile of rubber around the tire, so it looked like it just blew while the car was sitting there. It was the most bazaar thing and it looked like I would be missing class because of it (like any other college kid, I'd jump at any excuse to miss class, but not when its coming to the end of the semester when you're pumping out a bunch of projects that are worth more points than anything else in the semester...those darn teachers, they're so smart).
I figured, no biggie, I have a spare and I'll just have to do it myself this time (my dad is out of town and my brother is in school) and I'd make it to my second class no problem. Luckily, my friend Elaina was home and her boyfriend was coming over. Haha, they were both great sports about helping me, especially because it became more of a problem than simply changing a flat. When we tried to put the tire on, the tire was hitting the top shock/spring. We tried switching around tires on the car to see if that would help, but nope that wasn't the problem. It took us a few hours, between jacking up the car on a hill and figuring out how to make it work. ...Basically, I had already missed two classes and I had a test in my last class that I couldn't miss (that I had wished I had studied more for) so I got a ride to school and took a test I believe I aced..yay!
After scoring a ride to SLO (which was lucky because I was gonna have to take the bus), I sat in Kreuitzberg for a few hours, enjoying a cup of tea, reading, drawing, writing and....laughing about my whole day! I couldn't believe the series of events over the last few weeks. Nowadays, my days are so...routine, which I'm really not used to. In fact, I CANT STAND my days being so predictable. I like leaving some room for life to happen, so-to-speak. So, something like a flat tire just made me laugh all day because it was unpredictable and it was....great! I mean, not great that I got a flat tire, but that is life! It happens whether you approve of it or not, so you might as well enjoy it. My whole day was different than what I was planning it to be and, in a way, it made me feel somewhat relieved. After a while (this whole semester) of the same thing day in and out, you wonder if that is the purpose of living, and it's easier to lose track of what is most important.
Under the stress of trying to figure out what I was going to do about my car, I was able to find a clear moment of peace and inspiration sitting there in that cafe. And it is this: there is no need to worry about how life will pan out (careers, majors, success, wealth) because it is not totally within our control, it is a beautiful balance of what happens and how we react to what is happening. My old director used to say, "99% of acting is reacting" Sometimes its not about what you do, but about how you react to what is being done. So, I was happy that I was able to laugh about my situation....haha unbelievable.
To sum it up, I called a mechanic, who turned out to be incredibly nice, quick, affordable and Australian! He said that my car (some major part of it that I can't remember) had slid down into the axel and that the reason my tire was hitting the spring was because a few bolts weren't tight enough (after the last person who worked on this area of my car didn't tighten it enough) and over time it had probably been sliding down until eventually it was enough to cause my tire to blow. He said I was really lucky and he had never seen anything like that in his whole life of working on cars. So, something is looking out for me!
I'm not gonna say that the day wasn't stressful, and that I wasn't worried about what was going to happen to my car (because I was!), it was overwhelming and I hope it doesn't happen again anytime soon. But it's nice to get a wake up call every once in a while. Next time, I'll be more prepared to have a better reaction.
I'm gonna go buy paints today (that's right people, the artist is coming back again for all you who remember). Even though this semester has been bumpy, it has been full of lots of inspiration and I'm happy I feel like picking up my art box again. We need outlets for crazy days like that haha.
"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain."
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