Thursday, July 20, 2006

A Landfill? Nope, Just Dion's Car

I have mentioned that we had a garage sale last weekend. We are lucky enough to be able to borrow these HUGE wooded signs from Dion's boss. They are awesome and we get compliments on them each year. But, like I said, they are huge which means that Dion has to take my van to work so he can pick them up. Which means that I had to drive his car. A car that I once was the primary driver. I loved and cared for that car. I said nice things to it, it treated me well. Then we got the 1990 Blazer, which whom I loved from day one, but that's another story.

So I got to reconnect with my old car. I was looking forward to spending a nice day with the car I once loved. Until I opened the door. What I saw made my heart bleed. My poor old car had been turned into a landfill. BY MY HUSBAND! And worse yet, I forgot that some damage had been done to the radio, which meant no music for me and the girls. Try explaining why we are listening to the sound of wind through the windows to a 2 and 3 year old. It doesn't go over very well.

"MOMMY! We want to listen to Shrek!"

"Sorry girls, how about this....whhhooooossshhhhhh!!!"

It just isn't the same, and they knew it, and I suffered for it. But the worse part is I have to drive around quite a bit for my job. No music. Too much thinking time. Not just about life in general, but the fact that the "check engine" light has been one for a long long time and it would be my luck that it actually meant something was wrong and the car stopped while I was driving it. Then there's the whole fact that the air conditioning only works if you have it set to the highest setting.

WHHHHHHHOOOOOOSHHHHHHH!

And there were my curls blowing in all directions, up and down, and side to side. Awesome. I was going to look great!

"Sue! What did you do with your hair? It looks so...so...Bouffant!"

"Oh, that's just the air conditioning creating a wind tunnel in the car."

That's it! I decided to ask the head custodian at work if he would look at the radio and see if he could get it to work. At the very least I needed music to get me through the day, to survive the garbage dump I was riding around in. He looked at it, and couldn't figure it out. He thought everything was hooked up ok, so the next question was, does the radio work? Dion bought it off of eBay, and although I am a huge fan, sometimes you get screwed.

I decided to take the car to a local mechanic. He had his 17 year old-ish kid look at it, and he fixed it within an hour. But before I let him set foot in the car, I had to warn him of some of the things he may find in there (and that it was my husband's car, not mine. Yuck. Just...just...yuck!). For example, q-tips on the floor. Not mine. Garbage from one side of the floor to the other. Not mine. Purse. Ok, that was mine. They probably didn't believe me though and got a good chuckle out of it when I had left. I didn't care. I had music. I called Dion and said,

"Listen to this!!"

He thought that something else was wrong with the car and was totally shocked to hear tunes blaring from the radio.

So Prism and I bonded the rest of the day. I said I was sorry to leave him in the hands of someone who is cleanliness-challenged. I offered to clean him up a bit, but had no clue what to do with everything since the trunk was full of junk too. Ha ha ha! Junk in the trunk! I was sure that there was a purpose to having a winter glove in the front seat. I had better not mess with his fung shwei.

Now, the other day Dion had to break down and take the Prism back to the mechanic since it was dripping oil. I asked him if he cleaned the car up a little before taking it over. This was his reply....

"I picked up the q-tips.""

Wonderful. NOW how are the mechanics going to clean their ears?

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