There's Always August

The Watts car curse has struck again - on the way down to Portland for the First Friday Art Walk, our Jimmy overheated. We waited for it to cool, and added water - not that it needed it - and tried again, with the same result. Eventually we figured out that as long as we kept our speed under 45 MPH, we were okay, but by then it was too late to make it. (Plus, I didn't relish breaking down in, say, Bowdoinham, which is just outside of East Overshoe, if we were wrong.)

While we were sitting by the side of I-295, sweltering in the 90 degree heat, watching the minutes tick away as it became increasingly obvious that we were not going to make it to the event, we started to play a game I call Five Things that Don't Suck. It's pretty self-explanatory, and a fine game when some misfortune is playing itself out.

Doug's first Thing That Doesn't Suck was that we would now save the money we would have had to spend on dinner. He reached in his pocket for the twenty I'd given him to hold for that purpose...and it was gone. Somewhere in the efforts to revive the car, lying on his back in the breakdown lane or walking into the woods to find a stream or even a puddle for water, he had lost it.

And we just fell apart laughing, it was such a perfect insult-to-injury.

First Friday will happen next month. I was deeply disappointed to miss it, but there are so very many Things That Don't Suck, and we are blessed to be able to laugh at the things that do.