I am returning to my regularly scheduled life, back from 40-hour weeks worked in 4 days; 3- and 4-day weekends taken without using vacation days; audiobooks on road trips and unpacking just to pack again. (But can I just say that after both trips I was unpacked within 24 hours? Such is my need for routine and normalcy, I guess.)
Last weekend, as I mentioned, we drove to Glen Rose, TX, home of Dinosaur Valley State Park. Almost none of my second cousins on my dad’s side had met Dave, or knew I was married, for that matter. To eloping! -clink!- And I’m really not that close to that side of the family. I am NOW, now that everyone’s friended me on Facebook. It was fun. My grandma is 80 and has 6 siblings. All of them are still alive and kickin’ and 4 of them were there. I know lots of people who are like “What’s a great aunt?” And I have so many and I definitely consider myself fortunate. Especially when we’re playing cards and we get to make fun of Uncle Jimmy right in front of him because he can’t hear us.
Hell’s gonna be aaaaaaawesoooooome!
So then we came home, went right back to work through Thursday and left Thursday after work for Dallas. We spent the night at my parents’ and woke up early to get our rent car and head to Oklahoma. My Grand Plan was to leave my car in Dallas to get some paint/body work done. 4 years ago, my parents and I switched cars for some reason and while driving my car, my dad got rear ended by a Porsche Cayenne. Their insurance covered everything and I never even saw a scratch, a photo, nothing. Fast forward 4 years and the clear coat is totally peeling off.
*******
This conversation just happened. FYI, Ike is not allowed on the bed. When Dave got home, I was sitting on the bed typing this and Ike was curled up by my knees.
“Is that Ike ON THE BED with you?”
“Yeaaaaah.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going to feed the kids ice cream at bedtime.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. I’m just paying you back for it in advance.”
*******
Anyway, the paint/body shop has a lifetime warranty. So my Grand Plan was to drop it off Friday morning, drive a rental to OK, pick up my shiny car on Monday and drive her home. This plan was apparently full of holes.
1. Apparently you can’t rent a car with a debit card. Anywhere. Or if you do find a place that will rent to you without a major credit card, they’ll run a credit check and charge you $400 up front. But you don’t even have to worry about that. Because those places are out of cars. I don’t carry my credit cards around. I used to keep one in my wallet “for emergencies.” Guess what SHOULDN’T qualify as an emergency? Birthday presents for friends when I’m broke. Dark wash Joe’s Jeans size 28 in “The Lover” fit on clearance. Gas. Impromptu dinner dates because we had a stressful day. That include wine and dessert.
So I stopped that. Know what I keep now “for emergencies?” A savings account.
And what do I get for being responsible? The awesomeness of having to ask my little brother to rent a car for me.
And so I went with him to pick up the car, we dropped his car off at the shop, dropped mine off at the shop and finally got on the road at 11am, after arriving to the first car rental place at 7:30am.
2. Of course my car wasn’t ready on Monday! So I’m using my mom’s Accord. She’ll use my dad’s car while he’s in Rhode Island visiting family. I almost kept the rent car for a few more days- the Sirius radio seemed worth it, but my mom was right, this is much cheaper. However, she does not have a cd player or auxiliary port, let alone Sirius radio. I listened to Harry Potter via static fm transmitter.
3. This has nothing to do with my Grand Plan being full of holes. Just life being full of holes. Our A/C went out on Thursday. I called my landlady and told her that we’d be gone for 4 days, so the timing was just right. I had to pack in a 90° apartment, but it’d be all better when I came home.
No. We’d played phone tag with the A/C guy all weekend, which was dumb, in my opinion. Our landlady called an A/C guy and then gave us his number and told us to handle the rest of it. From Oklahoma. So he and Dave missed connections all weekend. They finally came out on Monday, found the problem, and needed clearance from our stupid landlady to go ahead with it. So we had to get in touch with her again, but by then it was too late to fix it and they said they’d come out Tuesday morning.
I don’t know if you’ve ever spent the night in a city apartment in Texas in June with no A/C . . . but it goes something like this. Cold shower, open windows, get the down comforter off the bed, don’t touch me, and waking up like, “OH MY GOD, WE DID IT, WE DESERVE A MEDAL!” (Even the dog, who won’t even sit on the hardwoods when a treat is at stake, he has to sit on a carpet or cushion- even HE moved off his bed onto the cool hardwoods for the night.) And then looking forward to going to work because at least there, your shirt and bra will dry.
Oh, and you now have 14 new mosquito bites.
