Yesterday I kept telling myself during the work day that all I had to do was hold out and I’d have a nice free evening to decompress, with no problems on my plate. Just home, decompression, some knitting.

I went out at lunchtime to walk Max, Miss Marja’s dog. It’s always such a lovely time with him, he’s happy to see me and I get a break from the work day. But as I left her neighborhood, I heard an awful sound. I knew immediately I’d need to check my tire. Turned back off the main road and found a place to park where I found this:

Yep, that’s like…the worlds largest bolt in my tire. It made quite the racket when driving. But, the tire seemed to be holding air at that time, so I gave up on the idea of driving to find lunch somewhere, simply hoping to get back on campus and then find out what Mr. Ink wanted me to do about this.

Now, Mr. Ink has been so very busy all year at work. The extreme cold temperatures we experienced brought out every car problem all over the city. He’s working extra hours daily and so is everyone else in that garage. So, it’s not like he could drop everything and come get the car. He was worried that the tire would lose air pressure over the course of the afternoon and I didn’t really like the idea of trying to drive it home with all the racket of that tire anyhow, so I decided best course of action was to see if someone in my area could patch the tire. Well, I called a garage that’s just on the corner of campus, within walking distance, to ask them if they’d be able to fit me in. I was told to bring the car down immediately, which I did. And they had it patched by the end of my work day, and refused to even take my money! I couldn’t believe it!

So, while I really didn’t need the extra headache of this problem, it turned out pretty well in the end, and I did get home not too long after I normally would. It’s just…I am in that place where my brain just doesn’t want to handle anything extra right now, and this was SO EXTRA.

Anyhow, once home I still had enough light to grab a photo of the legends of the fall sweater in progress.

It’s looking pretty good! I didn’t actually knit on it though, as I wanted to finish a pair of socks. I’ll get a photo of those tomorrow.

After the socks were done, Mr. Ink was trying to get some grocery shopping done after his busy day, and I wandered into Miss Butterfly’s room to check on her. I ended up sitting down and working on her puzzle with her. It’s HARD! She doesn’t love doing puzzles that are that many pieces, I think this one is 750. But she’s making good progress and I helped. Once Mr. Ink came home we took a break to help him put away groceries. Then she actually asked me to work on it with her again until dinner time. Well, when your 13 year old actually wants your company, you comply. So I sat in there until dinner time getting a few more pieces placed. It was not the evening I imagined, but it was a good evening.

Tonight I am again hoping for a good evening. An evening in which there isn’t much going on except walking the dog. An evening where downtime rules. I feel good about it, it could happen this time.