So there I was, merrily headed home at 5 pm on a Friday night – never a good idea – but the firm’s holiday party was that night and I planned to attend. For the uninitiated, the Big Dig has rerouted Boston traffic in any number of random configurations ever since I moved here in 1995 and earlier than that. (I always used to say I wouldn’t know how to get anywhere if they ever finished the thing, since all I knew were detours through the city. As it turns out, I shouldn’t have worried.) One of the planners’ latest moves has been to shut down traffic in one southbound lane of the underground tunnel, rerouting traffic through Chinatown via Surface Road, which has been reconfigured to four lanes to handle the traffic. Despite the added lanes, those of us who were already using Surface Road are feeling the pain as all of New England, it seems, is now taking the same route as us toward the Mass Pike. And this is still more fun on a Friday at rush hour. Thus.

To aid in traffic movement, there are often Boston police officers directing traffic through the six or seven lights en route to the Mass Pike. This normally works great, but not, I submit, when one is driving behind a Ford Subdivision and cannot see there is a cop standing in the intersection. I further submit that one’s expectation of stopping one’s car at a green light is minimal in the absence of seeing such a traffic officer, and my final point is that when one has turned around briefly to assess the wisdom of a lane change, there is absolutely no possibility of avoiding contact with said Ford Subdivision.

And so it was that my front end became about eight inches shorter. The radiator gave it up, and all coolant landed on the street. (The saddest moment of all came later, when the tow truck driver handed me my hood ornament.) Fortunately, there was a police officer right there (see the silver lining? See it??) who was able to stop all other traffic such that the Ford Subdivision and I could pull onto a side street and exchange information. (Previous readers will recall the wonderfulness of my car’s warning lights, and as predicted, the dash was lit like a Christmas tree with commands like STOP and little icons of oil and coolant containers – the closest I would come that night to holiday cheer.) The Ford Subdivision had a scratch on its bumper.

The estimate on my car is $5,600 to repair, though my piece is only a thousand. I am hopeful that I will have the car back in time to leave Boston on December 23.

In other news, my refrigerator is cleaner than yours, and Kelley is no longer permitted to mock garage sale purchases. As I looked at the calendar yesterday and realized I have twelve days before blowing town, adrenaline combined with caffeine to produce an overall “Oh my God!” and I started weeding out all the crap that I didn’t want the movers to pack and bring to NJ. (Actually, I didn’t want the movers to think “why did she save all this crap?” as they were packing, and while it’s interesting that I care what anonymous movers who are being paid to pack my crap think about me, that’s not today’s topic.) So now I have eleven white kitchen garbage bags full of clutter sitting in my dining room, waiting for trash day.

As part of this endeavor, I threw away almost everything in my fridge, removed the drawers, washed them, and put them back in. This is not crazy. This is a coping mechanism. And it would have been fine except that the fridge is nested in some cabinetry, and I had to pull it out so I could get the doors open wide open to facilitate drawer removal and replacement. The fridge is on wheels, so again – fine. But what I failed to do was to remove the supermarket shopping bags I had wedged in next to the fridge, so that when I pulled it out, the bags fell – behind the fridge. And I didn’t want to pull the fridge out further, because I knew there was a water line for the icemaker back there somewhere, and I suddenly feared ripping that out and causing a flash flood in my kitchen. But I couldn’t just push the fridge back in, because the wheels wouldn’t go over the bags. As I stood assessing whether the fridge looked good in its current position, I suddenly knew the exact tool that would save me – the Amish Grabber.

Previous readers might recall that I spent a day last summer accompanying the intrepid Jen on her yard sale rounds, and will further recall that I purchased the Amish Grabber for $1, after feeling I had gotten at least that much fun out of it by picking up other yard sale items with it and waving them in Jen’s face. The Amish Grabber did not have a name until I proudly displayed it to Kelley, who immediately knit his brow at the unnecessary nature of the purchase and asked “what the hell is that – an Amish Grabber?”  And so it came to pass.

The Amish Grabber saved the day, and restored my faith in the “just in case” purchase. In no time, all bags were safety removed from behind the fridge, the fridge was returned to its appropriate position, and said bags have been included with the other clutter in the dining room. All is right with the world.

Having said that, there is much I must do in the next eleven days. I need to complete the crap-reconnaissance-and-disposal project, pack for Christmas in Pennsylvania with the family, pack for the Caribbean vacation immediately following (I know, I know -- my Rolex runs slow, my cleaning people were late today, my BMW is always in the shop, blah blah blah life is hard) and pack up a few boxes with work clothes so I can report immediately to my new job in January. I also need to decide whether to sell or rent my home, get that in motion, and – oh yes – alert my upstairs neighbour that I am moving. (Also need to cancel the Globe, my cable, visit the post office for some change-of-address advice, and wrap Christmas presents.) Somewhere in there I have a doctor’s appointment, and a going-away party at the firm.  Probably the last thing I will do is return the car that I walked into National and rented last Saturday morning – the highest, widest, grayest SUV on the lot.

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