Even though this is my life, I still can’t believe that soon I’ll be the proud new owner of a minivan.  Grown-ups drive minivans, y’know?

I mean, I’ve been married since I was 20, I’ve got one heck of a mortgage, and I graduated college and got myself a career and everything.  Even with all that going for me, I still felt like a kid.  A kid in a candy store definitely, but still a kid.

I always thought becoming a mother would make me feel like a grown-up, but no dice.  I suppose spending a large chunk of my time playing peekaboo certainly doesn’t help, but I still feel like a big kid who plays with a little kid all day.

And now I’m going to be tooling around town driving a minivan.  So I’ll have the house, the marriage, the career, the minivan, and the adorable baby gurgling in the backseat.  Will I feel like a grown-up then?

We won’t get the minivan until later this month (my super-cool aunt is selling hers to us and she’s driving it up from California at the end of the month) but I know it’s white.  And pretty.  And fully loaded with awesome accessories (this will seriously be the nicest car I’ve ever driven).

So, now we just have to wait for Gandalf the White to join our family (yes, we’re naming the minivan Gandalf.  What better car to ferry my baby around than one named after a fierce, indestructible wizard?).  We’ll see if he brings my sense of adulthood with him…

It all started out with hot cocoa.  At my work, we have a large 3.5 lb. 54 ounce container of Swiss Miss hot cocoa mix.  I had a hankering for some of that chocolatey goodness, so I grabbed a mug and started mixing.  As I was carrying the hot cocoa container back to the shelf, it slipped from my fingers and landed on the ground in an atomic cloud of cocoa.

Even after vacuuming the carpet and cleaning the cocoa off the walls, it smelled overwhelmingly like cocoa in our office all day on Friday.  Nobody complained, because cocoa smells so nice, but it was rather embarrassing to be that chick who flings hot cocoa around the office like a monkey chucking excrement.

Then, I left work.  In my car.  Which I steered over a piece of metal in the road.  Said piece of metal punctured my tire so thoroughly that when I inspected the damage you could hear air exiting the tire from ten feet away.  Luckily for me, I was a block away from both my mother in law and sister in law, one of whom called AAA to change the tire and the other who let me occupy her couch while I waited.

My dignity and car destroyed, I went for the piéce de resistance: Damaging Wesley’s car.  I took his car to the grocery store on Saturday (Kermit was out of action due to his gimpy spare tire) and, as I was backing out of the garage, smashed his side mirror into the side of our garage.

So forceful was this impact that one of the pieces went flying clear across the garage.  It’s not that I was being careless and fiddling with the radio while backing out.  It’s that my brain simply does not work anymore.  I have a brain cloud, but no one’s offering me a vacation and unlimited shopping spree in payment for jumping into a volcano (If this statement confuses you, I recommend watching Joe vs the Volcano).

So, I added Krazy Glue to my shopping list and came home chagrined to tell Wes that he now had yet another thing to do around the house.  He glued his car back together (he wasn’t even mad at me for smashing it!) and we moved on to bigger and better things.

Unfortunately for me, this included washing a light blue baby blanket with a bright red baby blanket, thereby turning the back of said light blue blanket (which, pre-wash, was a lovely cream color) a not-so-masculine shade of pink.  Laundry fail.

I showed my handiwork to Wes, and he suggested that perhaps I should retire to our room to fold laundry.  He said, “I’m pretty sure you can’t break anything just by folding it.”

And he was right.  But still, I feel like I accomplished a lot (of destruction) this weekend.

 
I couldn’t have that, so I hung up my phone and shifted the car back to Park, and then to Drive again, hoping that would do the trick.  No dice.  At this point, traffic was moving all around me, but I wasn’t, so I turned on my hazard blinkers and stuck my little leg out the door of my flailing car and rowed my little boat off the street.

I may be the luckiest gal in town, however, because I happened to pull halfway into the driveway of the only auto mechanic in that part of town.  The nice guy took one look at my car, which was parked diagonally across his driveway since I lacked enough oomph in my left leg to get it all the way into the parking lot, and said, “Car trouble?”

He peeked under the car and said, “Uh oh.”  After helping me push Kermit into a parking spot, I saw what made his Uh go Oh.  A giant puddle of bubbly brown liquid, which he handily identified as transmission fluid.

Now, I’m no car expert but I reckon “Transmission trouble” is secret mechanic code for “You won’t be eating for a month.”  Wes being in school, I did what any self-respecting girl does: I called my Dad.  He recommended that I call our local Kia dealership to see whether the repair was likely to be covered under Kia’s famous 10 Year 100,000 Mile Warranty.

We’ll see.  Wes’ mother, who was kind enough to drop everything and come pick me up and also take me out to dinner and drive me back to her house because I forgot my keys because oh my gosh my mother-in-law is a saint, is going to let us use her AAA membership to tow Kermit to the Kia dealership so we can have the repairs covered under warranty.  If they apply.  If the repairs don’t apply, we may be selling a 2003 Kia Spectra soon!  Any takers?

Surprisingly, I’m not upset.  My feathers remain unruffled, my brow is uncreased, and I’m not even worried about it.  I’m not worried about much of anything right now, actually, and that has only a little to do with the scrumptious beef burrito I just ate.  Why, might you ask?

Because I just got back from the doctor.  Who confirmed what this test told us three weeks ago:

Before we owned the car outright, he (the car) bore the brunt of many snippy asides, jabs, and jokes at his expense. After all, he is a Kia, and Kia makes their cars with the intention that none of them should make it to 100,000 miles.

Kermit has trouble climbing hills, his doors won’t stay open and love to slam on you when your arms are full of stuff, and he won’t go over 70 mph without his side mirrors making a strange whistling sound that you can hear inside the car. The windows no longer seal the way they should, the little plastic doohickies in the trunk have all fallen off and been lost, and the backseat is not so much a backseat as it is a miniature impersonation of what a Korean car manufacturer thinks a backseat could be like for midgets.

Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that, when I crashed my car going a whopping 3 mph, my car was very nearly totalled (though in the interest of fairness to my completely uncaring {due to being inanimate and all} car, he did drive all the way home from Seattle with a cracked radiator after that accident, which I appreciate, because Seattle is not a good place to wait around for a tow truck).

In short, Kermit is very mockable. What doesn’t help it that his windshield is cracked clear from one side to the other because someone (not me) decided scraping ice was for the weak and turned the defroster up to high heat after the windshield had been sitting in freezing conditions for over a week.

All this to say, his storied history with us notwithstanding, he’s paid for in full and, as such, we don’t mind him as much. Knowing that we have to pay exactly $0 every month for the pleasure of driving him around makes both of us feel downright rosy toward our little Korean combustible.

Isn’t that an interesting phenomenon? It’s like that couch that you love desperately even though it’s stained, frayed, uncomfortable, and has given you a bad back but you adore it anyway because it’s free and the story of how you got it is mildly amusing.

This is not to say that we won’t be sad to see Kermit go, though. No, in the future when we buy our next car with cold, hard cash we probably won’t even shed a tear for poor old Kermit. Really, at over 70,000 miles, he’s like that old Eskimo that you put on an iceberg and float off into the sunset. He’s served his purpose, and well, but it’s time for him to go float to Russia so that he can find his true calling as a docent at the Kremlin.

Wes and I returned the rental car together (we have both come to the decision that we’re not Dodge fans. Also, I’m eternally grateful that I didn’t wreck the rental) and I had a terrific shock when I recognized the sales manager helping us out at the rental place.

His face looked really familiar but I couldn’t quite come up with his name. I mentioned this to Wes while the guy was on the phone and Wes recommended that I look at the business cards to see if I recognized a name. I did.

The moment my eyes flicked over his name I knew exactly who he was: I’d interviewed him for a job when I was a recruiter. We didn’t hire him based on the results of his interview with me. It was weird, the moment I read his name I remembered where he went to school, what his GPA was, and every impression I had of him from his interview.

It was…odd. He didn’t seem like he recognized me, and I wasn’t about to remind him that I’d interviewed him a year ago and decided not to hire him, so we escaped the situation without any awkwardness. Regardless, it was a very strange position to be in.

When you interview someone, it’s a whole different ball of wax from when you’re the one getting interviewed. I always tried to establish rapport with the people I interviewed, and not be a total jerk about the situation, but you can’t escape the fact that your opinion decides whether or not this person gets the job. This fact permeates the whole interview, and your conversation can never seem to escape that reality.

For my part, I’m just glad the guy either doesn’t have a freak memory like I do or doesn’t hold a grudge. Besides, if he had gotten the job he would have had to work with one of the worst bosses of all time. Believe me, he lucked out.

One of my favorite phone calls was from my Dad, who called last night to make sure I was OK (it occurred to me that a good daughter would probably have called her parents to tell them about what happened and not just blogged about and assumed they’d read, but I digress.) To be honest, once he ascertained that I was OK he did spend an inordinate amount of time laughing with me. That was really the turn-around moment for me. It’s hard to beat yourself up for crashing your car when your Dad is laughing about it with you.

The rental company has supplied me with a 2008 Dodge Caliber to drive around for awhile and I’m doing my best not to get confused by all the features (there are buttons on my steering wheel that I’m hoping won’t eject me the moment I press them.) The car is fine but it’s huge compared to Kermit and I’m having a really hard time pulling it into the garage. Wes had to re-park it for me because I can’t quite figure out where I am in the car and I’m terrified of running the brand-new rental car into the side of my garage.

Other than rental-car paranoia and the suspicious lack of Kia in our garage, life is dandy. I’m feeling no ill effects from my 2mph collision and am optimistic that the future will be less smash-y. I do worry that I haven’t heard an estimate from the auto-body place. I wonder if they took a look at my car, totalled up how much it would cost to repair it, and decided the repairs would cost more than the car is worth and just decided to push it into a lake and claim it was stolen.

I promise I won’t blog about The Great Crash of Yesterday tomorrow, mainly because the name of the crash will be different and I’m pretty sure I’ve milked this life event to the last drops. If you’re unfulfilled and aching for hilarity, I highly encourage you to watch this video and join me in cruel, delightful laughter.

It was a cloudy Seattle day. I was stopped at a red light. I thought the traffic was moving (but was distracted because I was putting my hands-free headset on. According to state law, it’s safer to drive with this stupid thing in my ear. They fail to mention that in order to abide by this law and inhabit the 21st century you either need to drive with it in your ear constantly, which makes my ear hurt, or learn how to put it in while driving, which as you can see, is neither safe nor possible. In so many words, this law sucks) but it actually wasn’t and I drove right into a stopped pick-up truck.

The end.

Today I was involved in my very first it-was-my-fault car accident. Somewhere, my mother is pulling out her baby album and writing all these details down under the section, “Baby’s very first moving vehicle violation.”

I am so fortunate because not only was the guy whose truck I hit an absolute nice guy, his truck was not damaged. As for my car, it’s not pretty. Here’s the money shot:

Kermit, my trusty Kia car, will not be winning any beauty contests any time soon.

I was able to safely drive him home only to discover, upon asking Wes why our garage smelled like celery, that the radiator is cracked and is leaking antifreeze like it’s going out of style.
Can you believe that damage? I was going less than 5mph (because I only had 2feet to travel between me and the other car) and my car looks like it was rammed into the side of a tractor by The Hulk.

Of all the accidents to have, though, this was a good one to have. No one is injured (thank goodness!), the other guy’s car is fine, and we have excellent car insurance coverage thanks to my brother in law so we’re only going to have to pay our deductible out of pocket in order to get this whole mess cleaned up.

I only wish I weren’t such a moron. That’s the thing I keep coming back to. I mean, seriously, who in the blue blazes drives straight into the back of an unmoving vehicle because they thought traffic was moving and it wasn’t and they weren’t paying attention because they were trying to put in a headset?!

Of course, Wes has been amazing throughout this whole ordeal, as has my brother in law. Honestly, everyone in this whole situation has been angelic. The only person who hasn’t been very nice to me is me. I’m mad as heck at myself. In fact, I’m not even speaking to myself.

Oh, and you know what the almost worst part of it was? Right after the accident, when we were all pulled over and I reached into my purse to grab a pen, do you know what happened? This:

My purse decided it absolutely had had enough with this nonsense and broke. The strap just flopped right off. It couldn’t have given me one moment of peace in that situation, it just needed to bust the heck out.

So, while Wes is off at the autobody place to get Kermit some reconstructive surgery, I’m going to bust out some thread and a needle. After my expensive little foray into real-life bumper car-ing I don’t think Wes will be down with the idea of letting me go shopping for a new purse anytime soon.

If you, or someone you know, has ever been involved in a car accident, injury-causing or otherwise, please share your horror story in the comments section. It’ll make me feel like a lot less of an absolute imbecile and anything that helps in that endeavor is greatly appreciated at this time.

I have a couple reactions to this. First of all, the computer malfunction in question is hilarious. I guess my “kill-switch” was engaged. Most cars have something called a kill-switch which shuts down the car when the car is going too fast (like over 120 mph). Kermit’s kill-switch activated when I was going…wait, are you ready for it?…35 miles per hour. Hold the phones! Wake the president! It’s a good thing Kermit stopped me because someone could have been hurt at that excessive speed!

My second reaction is one of incredulity. How can a belt cost $350? Aren’t those made of recycled rubber? I’ve read about kids in Africa who weave belts out of grass while their cars are driving. The grass belts don’t last very long, but that’s why they weave while they drive. All I need is a group of little weavers and I’ll be good to go!

Wes quashed that idea when he told me that they have to take apart half the engine to put the whatever-belt in. Also, if this belt breaks my engine will explode. Oh. I guess I can cancel my reservation on the group of little weavers.

Kermit will make it through another day, though. It’s still fun to imagine life with a malfunctioning kill-switch. I imagine the kill-switcher being an old lady with a bun and spectacles, and every time I try to drive over 35 mph she scowls and wags her finger at me before flipping the massive red “KILL SWITCH” under my car’s hood. I think her name is Edna.

I got my eyes checked on Saturday. The appointment took for-freaking-ever! I had to have my eyes dilated which makes waiting even worse because the light hurts your eyes and everything is blurry close up and far away. You can’t read and you can’t look out the window. I busied myself by organizing my purse. It was awful. To top it off, my prescription is wrong so I have go back. Balls!

So that was Saturday. Oh yeah, I went grocery shopping and cleaned the house (with Wes’ help!) and did the laundry too, but I feel like my appointment sucked the life and fun away from Saturday and what was left was a bleary tired mess. Two things I learned though: one, it’s fun to go out in public when your eyes are dilated as wide as saucers. Two, Wes is super-fast when it comes to cleaning and I should ask for his help more often (kidding, Wes! Maybe…ok, not really).

On Sunday I went to church, ran some errands, went back to church, got my oil changed, and then tragedy struck (why does tragedy always wait to strike on the weekends?). I was driving away from the oil changing place (don’t even get me started on the derelicts they employ there) and making a right turn when suddenly my steering wheel became really heavy. I mean, whoa! you know? So I’m not familiar with what it means when your steering wheel gets heavy and I try to accelerate out of the turn only to find that my gas pedal isn’t doing anything when I press down on it with my beautifully-boot-clad foot.

This is when I look down at the dashboard and every single indicator light that my car possesses is on. I look at the RPM-meter-thingie and it’s on 0. That’s when it all came together: at some point when I was turning right my car turned itself off. The power steering was off and that’s why my steering wheel was heavy. I slip the gear shifter to neutral and drift my sassy little way over to the side of the road and call Wes. He says that since I’m so close to home I should try to turn Kermit (my lazy car) back on and drive home.

I turn the key and Kermit starts and then dies. I try again and as soon as he starts I give him a little encouragement with the gas pedal. Kermit’s engine is running so ragged that it feels like I’m being scrambled but he’s going so I start my way down the street (don’t mind me, it looks like my car is in the depths of an ether binge but everything is fine!). Just before I’m about to turn left onto our street the engine shuts off again. I’ve got momentum going by this point and I’m thinking I’ll just drift into the driveway and everything will be fine.

Wrong! Traffic is coming from the other direction, I’ve got to stop my dead, lifeless car in the middle of the street and pray that it will turn on again so that I can drive into my garage. I’m still on the phone with Wes at this point and he may have been exposed to some potentially fatal profanity. Thankfully, Kermit starts again and I pull his shuddering, cracked-windshield, dented, scraped, and bald-tired little self into the garage and turn off the engine.

Oh, did I mention that because he’d gotten his oil changed there was smoke floating up from the hood? Yep, my car is so well-made that when I get the oil changed my car smokes like it’s on fire for the first couple drives. Don’t you just wish you drove a Kia?

So, today I drove Skippy (Wes’ car, a very nice and safe Toyota Camry) and he’s going to try driving Kermit back to the dealership to get him fixed. We’ll see if the damage is covered under warranty. I hope so but I doubt it.

I did, however, have several highlights this weekend. I ate fresh French bread, watched “The Count of Monte Cristo” (I’ve read the book in French and English and love the story. The movie was great and didn’t disappoint me at all. Hooray!), my husband helped me clean the house so that I had time to give myself a pedicure, my dog nailed all his obedience training, I got about a billion hugs from my impossibly cute nieces, and I made homemade lasagna and it turned out great.

In spite of the positive things that happened this weekend it was very stressful overall. That’s the bummer about the weekend. It’s only two days long and usually crammed with all the crap you don’t have time to do during the week. It puts a lot of pressure on you to enjoy the little time you have and then when you don’t it’s pretty disappointing.

It makes Monday kind of difficult because you’re staring down the barrel of another long work-week and you’re not sure if there’s a good weekend waiting on the other end. I sure do wish you could call a do-over on your weekend, but unfortunately my bosses aren’t as gracious as my little brother was and they won’t let me. It’s ok, though. The nice thing about weekends is that, no matter how bad your weekend was there’s always another one in five days.