That Giant Sucking Sound is a sigh of relief. I wasn’t sure what I would find when I opened the garage door this morning to run my daily errands. My left front tire had been looking low (to me) for more than a week, and I was afraid it might be completely flat by today. The only reason I hadn’t done something about it already was that I had a similar experience a few years ago, thinking a tire looked low, and everyone I asked about it acted as if I were crazy. Not wanting to be thought crazy is one of the governing principles of my social interactions.

The tire still looked low (to me) this morning, so I took it to the nearest gas station and filled it with air. That’s about the most mechanical thing I do, and I’m not even very good at that. The gauge seemed to be stuck, so I wasn’t sure how much air I was putting in the tire. In fact, from the look of it, I wasn’t sure I was getting any air in at all, but it cost me 75 cents to use the station’s pump, so I was going to get my money’s worth.

It felt better, driving away from the gas station, and when I parked in front of the post office I had a look. Plenty of air. Too much, maybe, but if it’s really losing air, a little extra probably isn’t going to do any harm. Most likely, I won’t be driving any more until Monday. If it looks low again by then, I’ll start to worry again. That’s how I roll.

It wasn’t just the tire situation, but also the dreary, rainy weather that cast a pall over my week. Those were the two reasons I didn’t go anywhere except to the post office and back. I didn’t go to the bank, I didn’t go to the grocery store, and I didn’t go to Office Depot to stock up on copy paper and printer ink. Every night when I went to bed, I had plans to do one or more of those things the next morning. Every morning I came to the realization that nothing was all that critical that it had to be done that day, that moment. It made for a pretty miserable week, and I sort of wallowed in it, but that’s all over now. I feel great, at least until Monday morning.