Shifts

A light dress layer otherwise known as a dressing gown.

A loan that puts a fifth hard-pull on your credit report just to relocate some debt, otherwise known as a shell game. The object is to inspire a sense of control.

Getting dressed is a form of control. You don't want to meet roofing estimators in a gown signaling still-sleeping; you don't want to be on the news looking like that should the house implode.

Three weeks ago, I was roused from non-slumber by voices droning in a hall. The neighbor my mom never met, after 15 years of living across the street from each other, had knocked on the door on a Sunday before 9 a.m. to "exchange information" that the evening before I had already laid groundwork for doing via text or call.

Mom's the kind of person who keeps robes for guests, so, bleary eyed and tousled, I "met" Bob, who ended up having no sense of humor -- or apology for backing into my parked car Saturday morning.

So, for the next number of days, I'm driving around a white rented Nissan that Bob's insurance is covering. They are also covering $3,100-worth of replacing-both-drivers'-side doors where Bob's white Hyundai cracked into my black Toyota with all the force of a suburban street dweller on his way to work at 5:30 a.m. on a Saturday, a little rainy, definitely dark. The intrusion bars were damaged, so to make my car safe to be hit again, it will get two used "new" doors.

They are not covering my lost time, of course; the universe asks about my banked moments, says that getting up too early on a Sunday, talking to insurance people and body-shop people and rental agency people, and traveling to and fro, don't count as real transactions.

There's nothing to shift to fill in those spots.

Time is money, but we're only going to compensate you for your property. And by compensate, we mean keep body-shop folks employed, shift risk from Bob to the American Family pool of insured, and possibly bill Bob at a higher rate come renewal time.

It's been more than a week since I've absorbed the news of having to have two doors replaced, along with the bumper and light removals to match paint and reconnect everything, and I only this morning realized that there is a high chance that these used new doors will come with standard windows.

My car has tinted windows.

Should I mention this?

Should I wait until Thanksgiving week when the job is scheduled to be done to say, "Oh, wow, well, now, that sure looks weird. One half of the car has tinted windows, and the other half does not."

Should I ask them to put new tint on ... or to take old tint off so that both halves match? And what of the rear window, where the tint is decidedly starting to look shoddy, a little bubbly and, let's face it, makes seeing anything through it basically impossible?

My voicemail to Bob was passive aggressive. I called after I talking to my insurance company about whether I should make the claim myself, after I had read the two notes that were left for me -- one in my mom's screen door, the other on my windshield, permanent marker, good penmanship, written by his wife on a waterproof "for sale" sign of neon pink and green. I tossed in a "I guess you don't have a back-up camera" in my introduction speech.

I didn't say, "Wow, you really like to zoom all the way across the other side of the street from your garage in the morning without looking."

Or, "I can't see out of my back window either."

He said he had looked but didn't see my car. Really, he must have "looked" once, glancing behind in the dark, in the drizzle, and where no car was expected, he saw none but proceeded to accelerate, not just coast, across the street into my parked car.

During the bland chatter, my mom noted that since my windows were dark, too, my car was even more difficult to see. Let's not help Bob's case ... let's not regret the urban-dweller decision I made to park at the curb instead of the driveway.

Anyway, I'm worried about this loan. Was it the right thing to do, to zero out credit cards, to bank cash for impending roof repairs?

I'm worried about whether the car doors will match or if the electric stuff will work right six months from now.

It helps to have small things to worry about, since impeachment hearings and collapsing ice sheets and governments can't be helped.