Today was the strangest day of what was already a roller coaster week.

Morning started out fine. I was a little spacy at work, but I felt okay. I decided to go home to eat lunch, and I had an errand to run while I was out. When I got in my car, though, it wouldn’t start. GRRR. I had a bill payment that absolutely had to be paid today, so I had to walk a mile home, write a check, walk to the place and pay the bill, and then walk that mile back to work.

I’ve been in such a state this week that I completely freaked out, because I had Gig Number Four tonight. I called Steph to let her know what was happening with my car, and then I started frantically texting and calling everyone I could think of to make a a backup plan for tonight, which meant I would need to either arrange a ride or borrow a car. . .anything. I wasn’t picky.

Everyone was either busy, or not in a position to give me a definite answer, so I put out a mass e-mail at work entitled, “car won’t start.” “Anybody know what I should check? Battery’s fine, it has gas and oil, and the starter’s fine.” I got a bunch of responses, and everyone seemed to be suggesting that it was spark-related (spark plugs? spark plug wires? distributor cap?), so I went out on my break and figured it couldn’t hurt to try and start it. It started perfectly, as if nothing had happened. PHEW. (And GRRR, for making me walk to pay my bill, and for making me think I needed to run around and text and call.) I checked the spark plug wires. Two of the four were loose, so I cinched them down. So far so good.

[Side note on that: when I went back inside, lots of people asked if I’d gotten the car going, and when I said yes and told one lady how, she furrowed her brow and said, “Hunh. I’ve never heard of that happening before.” As if it’s either impossible for spark plug wires to ever come loose, or it’s unfathomable since she’s never had the exact same experience. Cracked me up. Anyway.]

I met up with Saussha after she got off work, and we sat outside Urban Grind and talked for about twenty minutes until I had to walk back to work. That was really nice, cause we haven’t had the chance to do that for weeks.

After work, I went home, sat down for about one second, then loaded my instruments in the car and headed down to Lake Oswego for the gig. When I got to the venue, it turned out to be a little restaurant in a strip mall. Not exactly rock and roll, but I’ve certainly played worse. I made my presence known to Steph, who was busy talking with her family and friends, so I loaded my instruments in and then went back out to my car to listen to NPR for a while, because the group who was playing was too loud to talk over, and just plain boring. (Guy singer who played forgettable, strummy acoustic guitar songs, and he had a djembe player with him. Yawn.) After about ten minutes, CellistSkip arrived in his blue van, so I went over to say hi, and after about ten seconds of talking with him, I realized I had locked my keys in my car.

Sigh. As if I needed anything else stressful to happen this week. Sure, might as well add that to the list.

The restaurant owner very gamely tried to open the driver’s door with a coat hanger, and seemed to be making progress until he dropped his butter knife down inside my door. It’s still in there, by the way, and probably will be for quite a while. Once he realized my instruments were already inside, he figured the problem could wait, so he gave up and went back inside. But I was nervous about that, because Honda Civic hatchbacks are the most commonly stolen type of car–especially when the keys are in the ignition!–so I really wanted to get the situation handled. Skip gave the coat hanger a try, but despite his herculean efforts, he couldn’t quite get the door open either. Luckily, John (who is a fan of Stephanie’s, and who I’ve met a handful of times) had a Triple-A membership, so he was able to step in and save the day by calling them. (THANK YOU AGAIN, JOHN.)

Playing with Stephanie and Skip at the same time is a blast, and we always sound great together. Tonight was no exception. The second set was particularly great. When we were finished, we stayed and talked with Julie (from PDXposed, who filmed Stephanie and me down in Seaside last November) and a whole bunch of other people, drank wine and had ‘Greek’ veggie pizza and ‘Mediterranean’ nachos, which were the best nachos I’ve ever had. All in all, I’d call the day a success, cause it ended on such a good note.

I’m finally home. THIS WEEK HAS FINALLY COME TO AN END.

And now I’m going to spend the next fourteen hours in bed.