Saturday was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. You're supposed to approach the day in a spirit of brokenness, and through fasting and meditation, you find community and healing. It all came off pretty much as planned: what with one thing and another, I started the day feeling very broken indeed; and after 26 hours of fasting and meditation my spirit was much on the mend.
Sadly, after a day and a half in a crappy auditorium chair, that sense of brokenness had moved from my spirit to my lower back. And so early the next morning, I headed off to yoga for a little more healing.
I adore this early Sunday yoga class. It's taught by this guy named Tom, who radiates a calm that borders on beatific. Tom leads us through a great workout, and I always emerge feeling stretchy and strong and balanced.
But what I like even better is that Tom really knows how to talk the talk. He started class by telling us that if we've been noticing changes lately it's because Mercury is in the ascendancy, which apparently (according to Tom the Calm) throws everything a bit off-kilter. As class proceeded Tom talked about our Prana bodies (not sure I have one, but I do like saying those words. Prana body.) I know I worked extensively on my second and third Chakras, not that I could locate them. And while I never found out what Asanas are, I did learn that there are more than 100 of them. Imagine that! At the end of class Tom had us chant "Om" and try to make it vibrate in our third eye. So I chanted away, pretending all the while that I was a Beatle on an acid trip (George). By the end of class I felt pretty damn fine.
Having healed both spirit and body, I decided it was high time to heal some of the longer-term brokenness in my life. Specifically, i decided at long last to replace the battery in my car keys, which has been dead for many, many months. The car in question is a 2002 model, from the early-ish days of remote vehicle entry. There is exactly one lock on this car -- on the driver's side door. If you want to put something in the trunk (groceries, bass clarinets, suitcases), lacking a working remote, you have to unlock the driver's side door first, then lean in and pull the trunk tab, kind of a pain if your arms are full of groceries, suitcases, and/or bass clarinets. It would be a nice convenience to have a working key.
But how to fix this thing? I could buy a replacement at the dealer; but I just know that would be absurdly expensive. And it's a battery, fer Chrissake! I should be able to unscrew the back (see that little teeny-tiny screw up top?) and just replace it! But in order to do so, I need a little, tiny screwdriver. And that is a thing I do not have.
And then there's my kitchen dish rack. The tray underneath is supposed to drain water into the sink, but it's busted, so every time I do dishes I end up with a sloppy mess on my counter:
The plan to heal this particular brokenness involved sticking a simple plastic drainer tray underneath the rack.
So: all I needed to continue on my weekend project of healing the broken places was a plastic tray and a teeny-tiny screwdriver. I first tried Home Depot, but they do not carry such things. Instead they sent me across the street to the third circle of Hell:
Truly, my Prana body reviles Target. Mostly because my Prana body gets totally lost in Target.
I spent a very, very long time looking for the Kitchen section; and once I finally found it, I spent a very, very long time looking for the dish drainers. Turns out that dish drainers are not kitchen supplies! They are actually Home Storage items. Who knew?
While there were plenty of dish racks in Home Storage, there was not a single drainer tray to be had. It was Target, however, so there were lots of other attractive purchase opportunities! My fifth Chakra thinks I need some of these:
However, Asanas 75 - 82 were deeply calmed when I located the teeny-tiny screwdriver set:
I bought it and took it right to the car to open up my car key and pull out the dead battery, thinking I would run my Prana body right back into Target to buy a replacement. But when I pried open the back of the key, here's what I found:
That's no battery! It is a secret message from the good people of Lexus: There is no escaping the Lexus Parts Counter. Which, while not far from Target, was closed on Sunday.
Two box stores and a half-dozen impulse buys later, my broken places remained broken.
Fucking Mercury.