Keystone Knowers
Well, now we're in the realm of farce.
Yesterday, Zach and I arrived home at about 5:30 in the morning, having spent an unforeseeably long night flipping the house upstate in time for our next renters to arrive later this week.
We might have stayed another night if we weren't driving a rental car that was due back in Brooklyn by 8AM. (Because the 17-year-old engine of our own car can no longer be trusted, we are treating it like any other teenager: It's grounded. This hurts us way more than it hurts the car.)
The rental place didn't open until 7:30AM, so we drove straight home, where we saw that a spot was open on our block, right behind our decrepit ragptop. We parked, got out, and had started unloading the car when Zach noticed that our ragtop was a little more ragged than it was when we left on Friday.
That's because someone had slashed the top and broken into the car.
Now we have lived in New York City long enough to know better than to leave anything tempting in a car we park on the street, so we knew that nothing of consequence could have been taken. But that didn't stop the miscreant (or miscreants) from breaking the lock on our glove box or from breaking into our trunk. As far as we can tell, the perpetrator(s) made off with one mini Maglite flashlight and a few quarters that Zach keeps—hidden—in the ashtray.
Just as all this was sinking in, we ferried the first load of stuff from the rental car into our apartment, where we discovered that our cats were not at all amused that we hadn't made it home in time for dinner. Their dinner, that is. They (or she, if it was only one) peed in the middle of our bed and crapped in three different places: the bed (just to be thorough, I guess), the kitchen, and outside the litter box.
While Zach secured the ragtop, I cleaned up the indoor messes and gave the cats their very belated dinner. We finally closed our eyes—lying directly on top of the vinyl mattress protector we were smart enough to buy at some point—at about 6AM. I got up an hour and a half later to return the rental car.
A few hours after that, when we were both awake but still more than a little groggy, we heard the unmistakable sound of a street sweeper outside our window.
That's when Zach remembered that the ragtop was parked on the wrong side of the street. When we first arrived home, he had made a mental note to move the car before the 11AM street-cleaning deadline. And it was now well past 11AM.
Before he even went outside to check, we both knew that there would be a $45 ticket on our windshield.
Zach made the best of the situation. He left the ticket and the car where they were.
The way the alternate-side-of-the-street parking regulations work around here, we now have a legal parking spot until Thursday at 11.
If you have a really twisted view of the world, I guess you could call that good luck.
Yesterday, Zach and I arrived home at about 5:30 in the morning, having spent an unforeseeably long night flipping the house upstate in time for our next renters to arrive later this week.
We might have stayed another night if we weren't driving a rental car that was due back in Brooklyn by 8AM. (Because the 17-year-old engine of our own car can no longer be trusted, we are treating it like any other teenager: It's grounded. This hurts us way more than it hurts the car.)
The rental place didn't open until 7:30AM, so we drove straight home, where we saw that a spot was open on our block, right behind our decrepit ragptop. We parked, got out, and had started unloading the car when Zach noticed that our ragtop was a little more ragged than it was when we left on Friday.
That's because someone had slashed the top and broken into the car.
Now we have lived in New York City long enough to know better than to leave anything tempting in a car we park on the street, so we knew that nothing of consequence could have been taken. But that didn't stop the miscreant (or miscreants) from breaking the lock on our glove box or from breaking into our trunk. As far as we can tell, the perpetrator(s) made off with one mini Maglite flashlight and a few quarters that Zach keeps—hidden—in the ashtray.
Just as all this was sinking in, we ferried the first load of stuff from the rental car into our apartment, where we discovered that our cats were not at all amused that we hadn't made it home in time for dinner. Their dinner, that is. They (or she, if it was only one) peed in the middle of our bed and crapped in three different places: the bed (just to be thorough, I guess), the kitchen, and outside the litter box.
While Zach secured the ragtop, I cleaned up the indoor messes and gave the cats their very belated dinner. We finally closed our eyes—lying directly on top of the vinyl mattress protector we were smart enough to buy at some point—at about 6AM. I got up an hour and a half later to return the rental car.
A few hours after that, when we were both awake but still more than a little groggy, we heard the unmistakable sound of a street sweeper outside our window.
That's when Zach remembered that the ragtop was parked on the wrong side of the street. When we first arrived home, he had made a mental note to move the car before the 11AM street-cleaning deadline. And it was now well past 11AM.
Before he even went outside to check, we both knew that there would be a $45 ticket on our windshield.
Zach made the best of the situation. He left the ticket and the car where they were.
The way the alternate-side-of-the-street parking regulations work around here, we now have a legal parking spot until Thursday at 11.
If you have a really twisted view of the world, I guess you could call that good luck.
posted by Jody Rosen Knower at 7:13 PM
1 Comments:
omigod is all i can say.
and you didn't mention ANY of this at our lunch?
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