A Moldy House and a Dying Car

I hate being overwhelmed. It’s why I pack like a minimalist, and why I don’t bother with face creams, and why I don’t make to-do lists longer than five items at a time.

Needless to say, the REACH week was full of overwhelming situations, from uncertainty about my living situation, to ill health, to the masses and masses of Mennonites at REACH. But through it all I managed to not panic, by focusing on one thing at a time.

Get my oil changed.

Clear out of the Myerstown house.

Text Bettina about moving into her Lancaster city house after Philly. Answer the phone when she calls back. Work out logistics.

And, not to sound like a special-snowflake-helicopter-parented-millennial, but having my parents around was very comforting. I felt like they’d get me out of any jam I happened to fall into.

But when I left REACH Friday evening and tried to drive my car to our new Airbnb, I was officially completely overwhelmed. Because this car was not acting normal, at all. I mashed on the accelerator as hard as I could, but going up hills I could barely do 35 mph.

“Just make it to the Airbnb,” I told myself. “Just make it there, and then Dad will know what to do.”

And I made it, albeit slowly. I made it to a rutted lane that ran past junky outbuildings until it ended beside dingy trailer house sitting in an unkempt yard.

Um, this is…interesting…I thought as I made my way up the sagging porch steps.

Mom opened the door for me, and I stepped inside. Mismatched, over-crowded furniture. Awkward family photos all over the walls. Dusty knick-knacks everywhere.

“Did you notice the smell?” Dad asked.

“I smelled mold as soon as I walked in,” Mom added. And when I sniffed, yes, there was a definite mold odor in the air.

“Is Phoebe going to be okay?” I asked. Phoebe, my brother Matt’s girlfriend, has sensitivities to some molds and perfumes. She and Matt were planning to come spend the weekend with us.

“I don’t know,” said Mom. “I’m worried about both of you. Maybe we should get a hotel room or something.”

We held off on that decision until Matt and Phoebe arrived, and instead the discussion turned to the matter of my car. I told Dad my acceleration issues, and he looked worried.

“You can’t drive to Philadelphia until you get it looked at,” he said.

Sigh. I had feared that would be the case.

Oh one hand, it was nice to have Dad around to help me solve my car troubles. But on the other hand, it was awfully inconvenient timing. Car troubles two days after I took it to the mechanic? Really? And with that oil change, I’d had to schedule it a week in advance. It was currently Friday evening. How the bunnsylipper was I supposed to get my car fixed by Sunday morning?

If I couldn’t get it in to a mechanic on Saturday, where was I supposed to spend Sunday night? Crash randomly on a friend’s couch, I guess? Would it be okay to drive to a friend’s house?

How much was this thing going to cost me, anyway?

It was just a big mess.

But Matt and Phoebe arrived, and I put it out of my mind for a while. First, because we switched back to the discussion of whether or not the house mold was a deal breaker. Then, after both Phoebe and I insisted that we’d probably be fine, we had to argue a bit about who got the room with the air purifier. “You take it!” “No, you take it!”

Then, finally, we put unpleasant topics behind us and drank tea and ate donuts and had good family time.

And good-naturedly mocked our poor sketchy Airbnb.

Saturday morning, Dad valiantly called around trying to find a place that would look at my car. With very little luck. Mechanics generally aren’t even open Saturdays, it turns out.

Finally, late in the morning, he found a quick oil change place that was willing to look at it. He got in my car and backed it down the lane, headed to the mechanic.

Then, a few minutes later, he called me.

“So Emily, when you were having trouble with your accelerator, did it feel like it was really hard to push in?”

“Yes!” I said. “I didn’t know how to explain it, but now you know what it feels like, since you’ve driven it.”

“And did you feel like it wouldn’t go into second gear when you were going uphill?”

“Um, I’m not sure,” I said. “It would hardly make it up the hills.”

“Well, I think I know what your problem is,” laughed Dad. “Your floor mat is shoved up under the accelerator, so you can’t really push it down.”

Simultaneously, I felt intense relief and also like an idiot.

It turned out that when Ben had borrowed my car Thursday afternoon to drive it back to the Airbnb we had at the time, the non-sketchy one, he decided not to bother putting the seat back. It was just a quick drive. But his long legs shoved the floor mat forward, wedging it so firmly under the accelerator that it was difficult to press. Going uphill, the accelerator wasn’t getting pushed far enough down to kick into a lower gear.

After my car issue was sufficiently resolved, I had a fantastic day. In the morning, with the brilliant sunlight flooding everything, the sketchy Airbnb didn’t look so terrible. I slept in and ate donuts and drank tea. I had good satisfying conversations with my family.

And now, I had plans that were a bit more stable. I would get up early Sunday morning and drive Ben to the Philadelphia airport, and then zip over to Rosalyn’s house. I’d stay in Philadelphia for a week, and then drive back to Lancaster and move in with Bettina.

Actually, interesting note, I was able to meet Bettina at REACH. Briefly. But it was nice, and again made my life feel a bit more stable, being able to chat a bit with my future roommate.

Furthermore, I was able to solidify plans to move to Kansas after Lancaster. Which will probably be the last stop on my year of travel, since I’ve always planned to go back to Oregon for the summer. Oregon has the nicest summers of anywhere I’ve ever been.

After that, everything went according to plan. At this very moment I’m at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, feeling the subway rumble beneath me. I’ve been LOVING the city so far. And goodness, I have so many Philly stories, I can’t possibly end this blog series yet.

So. Stay tuned for a city blog post.

In keeping with tradition, let me see if I can come up with a juicy teaser:

In my Philly post I will tell the story of how someone I was exploring the city with panicked, impulsively did something illegal, and set off an alarm. Shortly afterwards I found myself alone in the city late at night with no money and a dying cell phone.