My pen pauses over a blank notebook page. I glance at my laptop, debating over which I should use. A sigh slips from my lips as I stare back at the notebook. The internet is too tempting a distraction. The story came easily the first time I wrote it, but it was lost somewhere within a series of reformats (news I didn’t take well).

I dip my pen onto the paper. The tip rests between lines before sweeping to the heading and scratching a title. It taps against my fingers and wanders to the right margin, coloring the vertical line blue and doodling a border of flowers, stars, princesses, and hillbillies.

Cadence scoots in beside me, staring with careful interest at the doodles and even more interest at my pen. Her hand reaches for it. I take her hand in mine and study it. My pen dips down again, drawing a daisy on her left hand and a heart on her right. She laughs and takes her hands back. She looks at them and points, cooing her version of the word “cool”. She tries for my pen a few more times, then gives up, and finds toys to distribute around the apartment. Every moment her hand swings level with her eyes, she stops and stares at the doodle, prodding it with her finger.

I close my notebook and hide my pen as Cadence makes another attempt for it. This story shouldn’t be so difficult.

Jake munches on his cereal over the hum of the local morning news. I scroll through the channels, failing to find anything of note. Jake nods his head to my question about watching the news. His answer surprises me. The news is not one of our regular favorites.

He looks great in a crisp new polo and a dark set of jeans. His demeanor is calm, especially for a first day on the job. He cleans his bowl, and I point the remote towards the T.V. A news anchor mentions a theater that is familiar to me; I’d seen a performance of The Christmas Carol there.

My finger pauses over the power button. I recognize one of the three actresses talking to the anchor. She was a high school friend, a girl I met during rehearsal for a lame middle school play. The last time I saw her was in Montana, back when my stomach was as bloated as a watermelon. She had been performing in a tourist trap town just outside Yellowstone National Park.

I’m glad she’s found her way back home.

A meandering route through the mall parking lot has rewarded me this jewel of a spot on a stalling route of traffic to the freeway. Cars inch forward ahead of me. Other vehicles are hedging their way into my lane. I’m feeling generous today, so I let a couple in.

Five minutes later: Jake’s ring tone bursts into song. Dang, he must be home already. I was hoping to get there before he did. Chatting happily into the speaker, I describe the clothes I’ve picked for him, and Cadence’s adorable, new tankini. My car hasn’t moved.

Thirty minutes later: The car has moved a maximum of thirty feet. Cadence is displaying symptoms of discomfort and hunger; her cries are short, but frequent. I throw teddy grahams into her lap and empty the remaining milk into her mouth. My teeth are grinding together, and I’ve begun to lose patience with all the intruding vehicles from the mall parking lot. Don’t they know how long I have been waiting here? Cars speed along the freeway just yards away, taunting me with inaccessibility.

Fifty minutes later: I’m approaching the freeway entrance road, at last. An apathetic glaze has blanketed my eyes. My lids start sinking. I flick them open and try to rub away the fatigue. Home sounds wonderful right now. I never want to see this mall or this car again. The right turning lane should be close. I inch nearer, starting to shake the fatigue. A construction sign is blocking my way. “No Right Turn” it says. My stomach sinks as I pull straight through the intersection that was supposed to take me home.

One hour, ten minutes later: I’ve been fighting an urge to bang my head repeatedly into the steering wheel. Cadence is whining in the back seat. I’ve maneuvered out of traffic, heading north to the next freeway entrance. A new stall is hanging two traffic lights in front of it. If I don’t get out of this car soon, I’m not sure I can be held responsible for my actions. Both traffic lights turn green, and little by little I escape the horror that is city traffic.

I charge into the Tire & Lube to escape the morning cold. The parking lot is empty today (just what I was hoping for). There’s no line at the service desk; I place a request (Please, please re-repair my leaky tire?), and receive a time estimate. Ten minutes is not too shabby. After relinquishing my keys, I wander off into the store’s other various departments.

I was here yesterday too, when the parking lot was jammed full of cars and the wait was impossible. I’d wandered to my little credit union branch at the front of the store, only to realize it was closed for Presidents Day. Refusing to sit in a cart, Cadence clung determinedly in my arms. My muscles were aching when we finally emerged. It was only when I had her strapped into the car seat that I noticed one shoe was missing.

Today, my eyes follow every move of her feet, making certain those shoes stay on. To keep her in the cart and happy, I’m letting her dig through my purse. She filters through it, smiling over the forbidden fruit that she’s suddenly been allowed.

I glance at the horizon on my way home from another round of errands. The sky is tinged a light brownish blue, brighter than usual, but not pretty. Spearheads of stone rise from my bustling valley, claiming an ageless authority over it. Ice caps put in mind a cruel reign, a reign of impassive Greek gods that laugh at the toiling ant people below.

So much practice of looking past the mountains has done them a disservice. They’ve blended into the nothing I associate with this city. Their majesty once set them apart. For the moment, I see them as they should be seen; I see how they shed an element of dignity on the insignificant buildings at their feet.

My eyes return to the errand at hand, the mountains sinking back into an overlooked background.

The snow is back, melting as it hits the ground.  A week or more with the heater switched in the off position has come to a cold end.  Jake and I stare at each other with eyes wide and troubled as Cadence bounces between us with unprecedented morning energy.  Work has started without him, never having found his way out of the apartment.

“So which one should I take?”

I respond with the name of one of the companies offering employment.  We stare around the room with our round, troubled eyes and back at each other between various phone calls.  Last night was much of the same, leading to little sleep.

He paces between the rooms, closing himself in the bedroom at times and reemerging just as confused.  At last, something of note, something definitive happens; I hear sparse words from the bedroom, hoping this will be the call that ends the madness.

The door swings open.  Jake appears in the hallway, his steps exuting confidence.  His face is relaxed, a light grin on his lips and an excited twinkle in his eyes.  I feel the muscles in my own face slack, and my lungs release their hostage air.  It’s finally over.

The DMV employee stares at her desk as she purses her lips and hangs up the phone.  She fiddles with her computer a moment, before I lose patience and have to ask her what happened.  The number hanging over her counter says 414.  That’s the number I waited to be called for twenty minutes.  I didn’t mind the wait, just glad I made it before closing time.

Cadence twists in my arms, reaching greedy little hands for my purse and the recently expired registration next to it.

“I can’t find anything that says they are the lien holder.”

I can tell she’s already doing more for me than she would for most people.  I wait for a suggestion on how I need to fix it but it doesn’t come.  She looks at me with eyebrows raised in the center.  I wonder at first if her concern is feigned, but I begin to believe it is genuine.  She seems distraught that she has to turn me away.

“I’ll get it figured out,” I say smiling and stuffing papers back into my purse.  She adds more sympathetic comments, and I repress an inclination to say, “Enough!  You don’t have to feel sorry for me.  It’s not like I’m crying.”  No, I’m not crying, but three years ago, same situation and I was a bawling mess.  I’m still ashamed of that moment.  It’s not the end of the world, I think as I head towards the wrong exit, I’ll get it straightened out.

Two men glance up from a couple of untidy desks and eye me with curiosity. Cadence is almost spilling from my arms along with a singing frog toy that she has just today decided she can’t part with. My purse is weighing down my shoulder with twice its usual burden stuffed inside. I had to make room for a cup of milk, a cup of juice, a sandwich bag of teddy grahams, a banana, two books (one to read and one for sudoku), and a bulky miniature notebook with the address for this business scrawled inside.

“Can we help you?” asks the older one with white stripes in his beard. He appears jaunty and agile despite the color fading from his hair.

I step closer to the desks. “I’m here with a Pontiac Bonneville I called about yesterday.” The younger man picks up a stack of papers and passes them off to his coworker.

“Ah, you must be,” he pauses, flipping through the papers.

“Sarah Schroeder,” I supply.

“Oh yes, we love you.” So he does remember; I’m the one with two cracked windshields, one for today and the other for tomorrow. “Well, we’ll get you out of here real quick.”

I pass off my keys to the younger one. As he exits through a back door he says, “I was just coming to get your car.”

I unload my armful of burdens in a row of chairs, registering what he just said. I came here for nothing? I could have stayed home, and they would have done this for me? Crap!

Twenty minutes to a half hour later, my car is waiting for me outside the shop, a strip of blue tape adorning the top of a crack-less windshield like a hospital I.D. bracelet on a baby’s ankle. It isn’t as emotional as that, but I’m excited for the moment when I can remove it and examine just how perfect my new prize is.

The older man calls over my shoulder as Cadence and I bound out the door, “You don’t have to come in tomorrow. We’ll come pick it up.”

Now he tells me.

Almost an hour, and my car is still parked in line while I’ve been parked in this cheap plastic chair.  Cadence fusses; I toss crackers, juice, and milk into her hands one-by-one to calm her down.  It’s not working.  As a last and reluctantly taken resort, I stand up and rock on my heels to soothe her into compliance.

Another customer steps into the waiting room/office.  He’s stylishly dressed for the cold, a fitting match for the Dodge Ram he drove here.  The room is getting crowded.  It used to be just Cadence and me.  Others have already come and gone, but I’m still here.

I wince as my car jolts forward into the inspection garage.  It jerks to a much too sudden stop.  The mechanic backs it out of the garage a few feet and accelerates back in.  I turn my head away, hoping it returns to me in one piece.  My car roars to life; the emissions test vibrating the glass doors and teasing a few glances from the other customers.  The RPM needle is flying off the gauge in my mind, the engine flying out of the hood and crashing into the waiting room.  Hoping it sounds worse than it is, I thrust the images from my head.  How many state inspection have ruined cars?  It had better be none.

The mechanic drives my car into the lot with a careless hand.  A paper crinkles in his hand as he enters and motions me to the desk.  A large REJECTED is stamped across the bottom, big enough to draw all the waiting eyes to it.  Great.  I can’t say I’m surprised; I’d just hoped the crack in the windshield wasn’t that tall.  I pay for my rejection, and leave with a big, red REJECTED stamped across my forehead.

Cadence grips a football as Jake cheers her on.  She turns her back on him, facing me.  Her breathing pauses, and her skin turns a shade closer to beet.  As Cadence would say, uh-oh; I know what that face means.  She pauses two more times, uttering tiny grunts.  I scoop her closer to me and peek down her diaper.  There’s nothing there, yet.

 She sits calmly, cradled in my arms (an oddity in and of itself) as I transport her to the changing table.  My suspicion is confirmed when the diaper is peeled away.  I search her dresser drawers and find myself debating on whether or not I need to find the baby-lax since it isn’t here.  With her bare bottom hanging away from me, I manipulate the bathroom doorknob and rummage through drawers and cabinets until I find it.

The transparent bulb syringe is capped with orange rubber.  I yank the cap off and squirt liquid glycerin where it needs to go, releasing the bulb before I remove it.  Bad move.  The syringe sucks the slightly less transparent liquid back.  I squeeze the bulb again, careful to keep the pressure until the syringe is removed.

I hold her legs folded over her torso and wait, a fresh diaper nearby; past experience has taught me how quickly the glycerin works.  Why waste a new diaper if I’ll have to change her again in one more minute?  Jake strolls in to observe, and this is the moment the glycerin starts to work.  A jet of brown tinted liquid shoots to the far end of the changing table, just short of a world record distance.  I abandon my notion to wait it out and wrap the new diaper around her.  I’d rather change her again in a minute than have poo shot across my face.