well, that's torn it

This post was supposed to be a review of Saturday evening's Redwood Symphony concert, featuring the Paganini Rhapsody (which is by Rachmaninoff). References from my posts of the last few days about my health issues would serve only as background to illustrate what physical challenges I overcame to get there.

It didn't work out that way. After a few bites at a local restaurant (my laxative had done its work, so I wasn't stuffed but I still had no appetite), I was driving down a residential street towards the theatre when the car drifted over, as it's been doing a lot in my hands lately, smacked into a parked car and then slammed into unoccupied kerb. Obviously it was going nowhere under its own power tonight. Strangely, the car I'd hit was not at all damaged. Me, I was shaken but not stirred.

B. had told me, before I left, that she didn't think I should be driving tonight, and she was right. The answering cop told me he was suspending my license, and I agreed that was the right thing to do. So, since B. couldn't do the driving - she fears traffic and hates going out at night - that puts paid to most of my concert going for the foreseeable future. I will be looking out for substitute methods of travel, but not too much of it. I said before that my illnesses over the last year and my recent hospital stay are a major life transition, and they surely are.

But though the circumstances were miserable and my evening plans were ruined, I couldn't have had a better time of it, thanks to the extraordinary kindness and helpfulness of several neighbors, including even the owner of the car I hit, who came out of curiosity and promptly pitched in to find me a chair to sit, call my insurance, fetch a tow truck for the car and a Lyft home for me, etc etc, and otherwise just hang out and pass the time with agreeable conversation.