Tag: lost | A Banana Peeled

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You don’t know what you don’t know

Posted on February 6, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Alternate title: I need to learn more basic stuff, but that’s not as catchy.

I have teeth problems that I need to deal with. I’m not happy about it, but at least I know what needs to be done. An implant and three crowns. Ouch, my wallet!

Then, my car started acting up. It wouldn’t start. I called my bro to verify that I should hook it up to the battery charger he had given to me, and I did that. It startd, but had an ominous meessage about checking the hybrid system. Plus a very scary red warning icon. My brother came over to check it out, but he brought the wrong gauge. He had suggested hooking it up to tthe battery charger overnight and fully charge the battery.

He explained, as he had before, that I drive the car too little in order to keep the battery fully charged. It charges as it runs. So he suggested as he had before to drive the car twenty minutse or so once a month. It was the same explanation he had given me the last time this happened which was several winters ago, but I hadn’t taken him up on it at the time. This time, once I got it statrted after jumping it, I did drive for twenty minutes. But that was with the message flashing, which made me tense as I drove.

Before my brother left last night, he hooked up my car to the battery charger and told me to leave it overnight. I did. This morning, I checked it and the car started right away. The dreaded message was gone! The ‘fill the damn gas’ icon came on, which I did when I went out to go grocery shopping. I was nervous after twenty minutes in Cubs, but the car started without a murmur.

The ‘fill the damn tires with air’ light is also on, but that’s a profblem for next time I go to Cubs me. I will pay more attention this time to my brother’s warning and take the car out more often. I am so relieved that it wasn’t the more dire option, but it exposed how little I know about cars.

My brother is my go-to about anything technological/electrical/car-related, but I probably should know more about the basics. On the other hand, it’s not as if it comes up that often so even if I were to learn more about it for myself, I’ll probably not remember by the next time I have to deal with the same problem.

Minor stresses bringing major headaches

Posted on December 28, 2020 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I was talking to my brother yesterday about something we need to get done by the end of the year when he brought up something else. Ugh. Ok. It has a long backstory that I’ll try to keep short. In order to be declared the children of our parents in Taiwan, my brother and I had to get it declared to be true by the Taiwanese kids department in Chicago. Not the actual department, of course, but that’s the purpose. We had to send them our birth certificates in order for them to verify we were, indeed, the children of our parents. Which, I mean….ok. Whatever. It was a chore because Taiwanese people have a very different way of doing business, but it got done. I put the document away ‘in a safe place’ and promptly forget about it.

Fast-forward to the phone call yesterday with my brother. He mentioned that our mother had informed him (because this is always how this happened) that our father had been furious because he needed copies of this for some family land thing and we didn’t give them to him. But, we didn’t know about it and neither did our mother. Which is totally in keeping with my father’s M.O. I have no doubt if you asked him, he’d insist that he told someone about it–probably my mother. He’s a raging narcissist and assumes that anything that is important to him is important to everyone else and they should KNOW–at least by osmosis if nothing else. So, of course, why my mother conveys it to my brother and/or me, there’s a sense of urgency about it that is strongly impressed upon us. My brother is able to ignore this pressure to a certain extent, though it can get to him as well.

I was sure I knew where this document was. Under the coffee table on the shelf that is there. That’s where I would have put it, probably in a book to be ‘safe’. I’m not saying this is a good idea, mind, but I know the way I work. This was several months ago, and I probably promised myself I would put it somewhere safer when I got around to it–which I never would. Wait. That’s not exactly true. I thought it was in the first drawer in the kitchen because that’s where I put everything important. I rummaged in that drawer while talking to my brother and he mentioned he didn’t think it was there (because we had ransacked it several times when looking for a key we couldn’t find). He said he thought it was on the coffee table (he was the one who brought it over to me so many months ago) and it clicked in my brain that this was correct.