"hey! who turned out the lights?" Tom said darkly

The weather in Constitution City is crazy. There's all tornado watches and torrential downpours and my ceiling fell in. Among other things. I've been meaning to leave a burnt offering over at the Lincoln Memorial for a while now, in an attempt at propitiation so Ghost Abe will make it quit raining and we can use our clothesline again, but something's wrong with the battery in my truck. It keeps not working and I did not even leave the lights on all night!

This happened twice and both times were preceded by several days of the truck sitting around doing nothing. So maybe there's no problem after all, other than it being a very old truck I mean. According to some guy at a bar last night, I should try sanding away the corrosion from the battery. But I suspect that if it happens again, I will go to some professionals and buy a new battery instead of testing this theory.

Anyway as a result of all this, I am now the proud owner of jumper cables AND I KNOW WHERE THEY ARE. I am so prepared for anything. Plus I also am the proud owner of a lot of bungee cords. So when my friend Kate said "let's go pick up a gigantic bookshelf thing from Arlington" I didn't even ask her how gigantic it was. I just said "hop in!" and stepped on it.

As it turns out, it was very gigantic. We had an exciting journey back, with the bookshelf thing standing upright in the back of my very small, very old, kind of weakly (but very beautiful) truck. It was all tied down with many bungee cords but it was still very wobbly and nervous-making and we were the recipients of numerous worried glances. And probably some more angry-like, impatient glances as well but we ignored those ones because of our Zen-like attitude toward the world in general and specifically people with Road Rage.

Now my truck is parked at Kate's house and the shelf thing is still in it. Because I am far too delicate a flower to help her carry it inside. Also I had other things to do like get ready for my trip to Big M State #2 tomorrow.

This is gonna be a great trip, I can already tell. I will hang out with rock stars as well as Trisha and Emily and babies and another Kate and my brother.

This brother is excellent at my favorite kind of pun, the ever-hilarious Tom Swifty. In my opinion, his winning attempt so far is

"This seems like a mausoleum" Tom said cryptically

Actually that was a lie. That's not my real number one favorite. It's pretty good, but my real number one favorite is even better. But I'm saving that one for later. It will be the title of another post, any day now. Just you wait! It's gonna be so worth it!