$130 to Park Downtown and Other Reasons my Summer Stinks, page 1

Expect the unexpected should be my motto this summer.

I can count on something to go wrong during the last week of May. Why, because my birthday is that week.

The "big" issue this year was that my wife broke one of her front teeth.

One her life long "fears" is that she would lose her teeth and "have to wear dentures and "look like some hillbilly". Well let's look at reality now. First, she lived most of her live in a little hillbilly town in Oklahoma. Second, what remains of her natural teeth are so bad that she doesn't dare smile. Plus she hates the thought of having dentures fall out during a conversation or other problems people experience if they don't care for their dentures properly. She can't take care of anything anyhow, so how can I expect her to take care of false teeth

She went to the dentist and was able to get a false tooth to replace her newly broken one. The doctor just about had a stroke when he first looked into her mouth and told her she needs ALL of her teeth removed.
She made a big issue of all this with me but finally got use to the false tooth in a few days. Then she and a friend went out to their favorite eatery. She enjoyed the time out and came home to tell me so.

This is where she goes nuts again because she actually left her new dentures at the restaurant. No, after too many phone calls to the restaurant, she new her new dentures were lost in space. By the way, one of my teeth broke the same week.

To continue this story, such as the $130 to park downtown bit, I need to supply a bit of background information about my wife.

She has been disabled for about the past ten years. Which happens to be about as long as we have been married. Her problems consist of physical and mental ones that keep her from being able to stand for more than a few minutes, unable to lift anything more than 5-8 pounds, and unable to focus on a given task for more than one hour before forgetting what she was doing and how she is to do so.

She is very much interested in the music scene in and around Tulsa. Before she became disabled she worked in a music recording studio for a grammy award winning musician. In part because of this and because of her love for music she has met and for the most part made friends with 80 plus singer/songwriters and so forth. Music is in her blood.

The son of the musician she had work for opened some small clubs recently. My wife has visited these frequently, in part for the music, and in part to learn a new trade. I'll save the details, but everyone there knows her limitations and are showing her how to do things just a little at a time. No, she's not working there exactly, just learning the ins and outs. Everyone is hoping with time, that she can get her mind and body working together so she can keep a paying job for a change. This has been one of the best things to have happened in some time.

:bnghd:As you may have expected this is where things go downhill. At about 0300 one morning my wife calls from her cell phone, very drunk, and very lost as well. I was at a lost as what to do. She had our only car and I didn't have the numbers for anyone who could possibly have helped out anyway. Using an internet map I was able to find out about where my wife was at and manged to guide her half way home. I wanted to at least get her to a 24 hr store or some other place to at least stop for a few hours but apparently there was nothing of sorts around her out in the middle of nowhere. A county officer came upon her as she was stopped for way too long at an intersection, not knowning which way to go.

She spent a very uncomfortable night in jail, sitting in a plastic chair and covered by a probably wool blanket. I mentioned the chair and the blanket because she has recently has surgery on her neck and back. This was causing her a great deal of pain. She was not allowed to have any of her many medicines while there. The blanket, of which she was told was not wool, had to have been wool based on the allergic rash she got from it. Towards lunch time of the next day they let her out on bond due to the nurse there not able to administer my wife's long list of medication. My wife was an emotional wreck during all this and has been hell to deal with ever since for the most part. Yes, I missed work that day. I was close to being fired before this. Day after day I have had to put up with my wife's numerous what ifs about the DUI. I has been driving me crazy. I don't have a place to go after work to vent the stress from work let alone the stress from home.

As of yesterday things have calmed down somewhat for my wife. I took her to court to go through the process of finding out when her hearing will be set for. Like I said about things going bad around birthdays, the hearing is two days after her next birthday. Last night my wife went back to one of the clubs to hear some new talent sing and to try to calm down. No she has not had, nor is she allowed to have any alcohol since the DUI. It's soda and juice only. Well ,the singer didn't sing very so she left early. She went outside and our car was no place to be found!

She called the police who acted like they could care less that she was missing her car. This is a different county than her DUI. They told her they had no reports of recovered stolen cars tonight. Since my wife still has a few brain cells working, she called one of the biggest towing companies in Tulsa. Yes, the had the car in impound under order of a Tulsa Police officer. The reason the car was towed down right stinks. We haven't lived in Tulsa for very long and have not changed the address the car's title yet. The police officer noticed out car parked legally at that, but the home address gotten from the license plate in about 30 miles away. The $%$&#$ cop actually thought the car was stolen due to the out of town plate and that is why he had it towed away. Come on, it cost us $130 to get our car back. I've sent off an email to the news department of a local TV station to see if that would do any good. Now we wait.

What else has really MADE my summer? As I said, I had a broken tooth too.
This was getting painful for most the month of June. I managed to get my wife's dentist to pull it last week, but complications required me to go back yesterday and go through even more painful dentistry work. Grrr, I'm still hurting plus I work 40 hours a week at a job I almost got fired from last month. And like everyone else we have bills, bills, bills, bills, bills, and now all the court cost of my wife's DUI and the latest impound.

By the way, she really didn't have much to drink. I've seen her down a lot more and still be as sober as the next person. The problem was, her medicines increased the blood/alcohol level to higher than they really were. No my wife was not able to walk a straight line for the cop, but because of her back problems she have never been able to walk a straight line.

NOTE: no disrespect was or is being made to anyone who may take offense to my reference to a "hillbilly oklahoma town, or hillbillies in general.