The Most Non-Traveling Travel Cat Adjuster

 



I got my deployment notice again. Aside from that little Virginia Beach escape, I’ve been in the house since my Denver-Colorado Springs trip. At this point, I might be the most non-traveling travel CAT adjuster in America.

The thing is, I only get deployed if something bad has happened—hail, fire, locusts. So on the one hand, it’s great. Nobody’s car is floating away, nobody’s crying over a broken windshield. On the other hand, I’m starting to climb the walls like a raccoon trapped in an attic.

Cabin Fever, Restless Legs, and Other Disorders of the Soul

It’s a weird thing, this house-bound restlessness. I guess the clinical term would be cabin fever—but it feels closer to some strange cocktail of seasonal affective disorder and restless legs syndrome of the soul.

Even when COVID shut the world down, I wasn’t stuck at home. I was out every day, driving like a moonshiner with my state-issued Essential Employee certificate on the dashboard like a hall pass from God. I was built for motion. Being parked like this makes me feel like a race car on jack stands.

A home deployment is a special kind of torture. I sit at my computer, trying to untangle claims that somebody else has already touched and thoroughly mangled in the field. I stare out the window so long I start timing the rural delivery driver, and I can tell what kind of day he’s having just by whether he pulls up at 10:03 or 10:17. I’ve considered waving at him like a secret Morse code agent to pass the time, but I worry that might make my neighbors think I’ve lost it.

Bad Days Pay the Bills

Back in my body shop days, I always knew somebody had to be having a bad day for me to be making a living. Food on the table, Four Ipsy subscriptions for the kids, Jamie’s rescue operation for dying clearance plants at Lowe’s—it all came from someone else’s fender bender.

I used to explain that to customers as part of my rapport-building spiel, and once a guy said,

“You don’t have to explain it to me—I’m a cardiac surgeon. I only work when people are having a bad day. And when nobody’s having a bad day, I golf.”

Fear of Retiring Into Nothing

I used to think my biggest fear was dying on the job—face down in a pile of Bondo dust—but as time goes on, I think my real fear is retiring and having nothing to do. I saw it back up north. People would get snowed in all winter and slowly devolve into Jack Nicholson from The Shining. Cabin fever is real, and I can feel it creeping up on me now.

Titus: The Real Homebody

Titus loves it, of course. He knows I’m home, and he rings the bell 800 times a day, demanding to go out, then come back in, then go back out again. At this point, I’ve walked little dirt trails into my own lawn from pacing the same path over and over. The fitness tracker on my phone thinks I’m training for a hamster Olympics.

Being home this much makes me realize I was built for movement. Even when I wasn’t traveling for work, back in the shop days, every day was different. New cars, new jobs, new people. Now it’s just me, Titus, and the same four walls.

If I don’t get deployed soon, I might start alphabetizing the condiments just to feel like I’m accomplishing something.


P.S. I know the blog’s been quiet lately. It’s hard to write about travel and motion when the most exciting things in my day are pacing little dirt trails in the lawn like a caffeinated hamster, timing the rural delivery driver to judge what kind of day he’s having, and Making a sandwich in the kitchen while Titus cheers me on like it’s the Indy 500. Adventure, clearly, is alive and well…just in a very tiny, domestic way.

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