On Monday, my daughter's 6th birthday, my car died on me. I have been expecting this for sometime. The car is 18 years old, it is rusted, the engine is rattling, I have no air conditioning and the paint is peeling off. I am not a vain person and I could care less how my car looks or how people perceive me - we drive our cars until they die but my car is on life support. It really is no longer safe for me to drive long distances.
The problem with my car needing to be replaced is that it is an extra plate in the air that I don't really have time to deal with and this month is CRAZY at work. So on Monday night I told my husband I would meet him at the dealership after work and that he would need to leave an hour early. Great.
I woke up on Tuesday morning and I had to put on a training downtown so I woke up at my usual 5 am but had to leave earlier than usual. Thank God my mother in law is in town because she was super helpful in assisting with my children. When I got downtown, the place where I was doing the training was tucked away and I kept going in circles to get to this parking garage because it is a maze of one-way streets down there. Finally, I said screw it because if I kept driving around I would be late -so I parked in the hospital garage which was 3 blocks from where I needed to be. The problem was that I had 30 pounds of stuff. I had to bring all my own AV stuff so I had a projector, a laptop, a large rolling suitcase, a duffel bag, a health model, my purse...I looked like a damn gypsy. It was the longest 3 blocks I ever walked in my life.
So I show up and I am there with lots of time to spare and the lady directs me to where I need to set up, so I get my projector working and all my stuff unpacked and a lady come in and tells me that I was told to set up in the wrong room. So I repack everything and we bring everything upstairs and set up again. Thankfully the training went well. All my presentations pulled up. It is rarely that easy. After 6 hours of giving lectures I was pretty beat. I pack up all my crap and head back to the parking garage. It was like 98 degrees outside and I am in a 3/4 sleeve button up dress shirt and a black skirt down to my knees with 30 pounds of crap on my back and I was just struggling. I wanted to just lie down on the sidewalk. Thank God I was wearing flats because if I had heels on I would have just left my crap on the side of the road.
By the time I get to the parking garage I am pretty much covered in sweat. My crap car has no air conditioning so I was rolling down all the windows and drinking my lukewarm water. I am finally sitting though, so I was good. I drive down and I owed $10.50 for parking and I only had 8 dollars on me and the lady was like "We only take cash or check." WTF? I am not a drug dealer. I don't carry a bunch of cash. I just looked at this lady with red in my eyes. If I had a watch or something I would have tried to bribe her to to let me through. No such luck. So I had to turn around, re-park, walk a damn quarter mile through the hospital to find an ATM. I was just letting out a slew of obscenities along the way. I was dropping F bombs under my breath like crazy. So I get back in my car and go to pay and my time rolled over again so now it was $11.25. I just laughed out loud. The lady probably thought I lost my mind. I was close, really close.
So I drive to the dealership and my husband isn't there. I get out of my car and I can see all the salesman inside and they all look at each other like no one wants to "waste" their time with me because everyone assumes because I drive a crap car I have no money. It was a Kia dealership- I could purchase any car on that lot, they aren't exactly luxury vehicles - but whatever. So there was one car in particular that I had seen online but it was being test driven when I walked in. So he showed me some other over-priced cars that I was not overly thrilled with. The car came back that I wanted to see and the other sales guy hands the keys to the guy I was talking to. My sales guys says to me, "Guess he's not going to buy it." So I test drive it. I love it. I tell the guy to write it up and make it a done deal and when he does the manager guy says, "That car just sold." The person who test drove the car before me decided to purchase it yet they still let me drive it. My husband was still not there so I waited and asked about other inventory. I saw the people that were buying the car and it was this 16 year old whose grandma was buying the car and he was just sitting there smirking at me and I was annoyed. I work hard and this little shit that isn't even finished puberty got the car I wanted to buy. Grrrr.
So as I'm waiting the manager guy is trying to get me to buy a brand new car. I told him I was not interested in a new car due to depreciation and what specifically I was looking for and he said to me, "I'm surprised you are so picky considering the car you currently drive." Thankfully my husband pulled up at that point. He gets out of the car and I'm like, "There is nothing good here. Let's go." He was like, "Let's just look around." "I looked around, these cars are way overpriced and the manager is a douche bag." My husband started shooting daggers at me with his eyes and went on this rant, "I can't believe I got off work early and you're not even going to buy a car..." I rarely EVER yell at my husband but I lost it in the parking lot. "I am not buying a shitty car for $20,000 here just because you got off work a 1/2 hour early. Don't take time off work. I'm a big girl and can pick out my own car." He didn't like that I said that and he rolled his eyes at me. He did agree to pick up the kids though, so at least he wasn't sucking all the way around.
I drive home and of course I am in a traffic jam, then it starts to downpour but I can't roll my windows up because I have no air and my windows will fog up. So my whole left side was just getting soaked and I didn't even care at that point. I was so exhausted that I felt numb inside.
I drove up to the house and as I am getting ready to turn the car off, a familiar song comes on the radio. "When the day is long...." How appropriate. Everybody Hurts. I laid my head on the steering wheel and closed my eyes and just listened to the music and the rain and focused on breathing in and out. You are right REM, I do need to hold on. Tomorrow is a new day.
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