leaky tire. leaky life.

The Suburban’s back right tire has a slow leak.  (As if having 258,000 miles wasn’t problem enough.  Also the leather is torn right where my left leg hits every single day.  There’s this weird continual dampness in the back right and I have to remind myself never to store my suitcase there on trips.  And it smells like feet.  Stinky stink Keen kid feet.  But I should mention here – I still love that old ride.)

I fill the tire with air.  (You might already know how much I dislike the gas pumps.  I feel pretty much the same way about the air stations.)

(Why is it so hard to remember to collect quarters for that simple task?)

The air holds in the tire for about five or six days.

I’ll be walking back to the car in the parking lot and see its near flatness and suddenly be reminded.

“Oh yeah.  I need to get that repaired.”

That back right tire and I have been doing this dance since early August.  At least.

And, like so much fodder that makes up this blog, a leaky flat tire stands as an analogy for a lot of other stuff.

The little bitty things that are annoyances but need to be taken care of.

Some days my whole life feels like a leaky back right tire.

Slowly losing air.  Deflating.  Noticing a dangerous deficiency.  Getting the almost-right tools and giving the situation a quick fix.  Nothing permanent, not the cure, but a little lift that works for now but will find you right back in the same place in another week.

Knowing that you probably need to go to the right shop for the right solution but that requires extra time, a plan, forethought – maybe even a little cash.

Sure, when you finally get tired enough of the weekly quarter routine, you might actually swing your gas-guzzling rig right on over to the tire shop.  The tire shop that happens to be only a tire’s roll away from the air station you visit every single week.

But you kind of have to get annoyed enough first at the problem.  The sort of remedy has to be bothersome enough that you stop going for the quick fix and search out the real solution.

Yeah.  That’s like a lot of stuff in life.  Stuff inside hearts and you know – heavy suitcase stuff.

Stuff I can’t even begin to unpack tonight, or this year.

Slowly leaking air kind of stuff.

(When I was an English teacher in a traditional setting I would instruct my students to avoid words like “things” and “stuff”.  I’d urge them to be specific and to be exact.  Precise.)

But this is my blog and this is my life and I just don’t have anything more specific or exact tonight than plain old stuff!

Plain old steady leaking air from a back tire kind of stuff.