About car rentals and drawbridges

When I say my December trip to Washington D.C. was perfect, I am not lying.

Nothing major went wrong and a lot of things went right.

My August trip to the city was not perfect. I made a lot of dumb mistakes because I was nervous, and looking back, those mistakes are pretty funny.

What was I nervous about, you might be asking?

First of all, the entire premise of this trip is weird at best. Going to a wedding of people that you’ve hung out with twice is kind of weird. Okay, very weird, but rum is rum and Tiffany is Tiffany and that’s just that.

Second, I had to rent a car. That itself scared the shit out of me in a way that I can can barely explain.

First off, there’s the physical act of renting a car, something I’ve never done before. I went to a different airport to pick the car up, and there were a ton of people and very long lines involved.

I get up to the counter and the very nice attendant’s computer freezes when I go to pay. It was absolutely a technology issue on their part, but I automatically assumed I did something wrong and was going to be arrested for illegal car renting or for wearing a cute dress in an airport or something.

Illegal use of formal attire.

So that issue gets sorted out, and I thought this would be some kind of top shelf experience. I thought they would bring a car to me, roll out a red carpet, and personally hold my hand and invite me in.

The reality? They turn you loose in a giant parking garage and you just kind of figure it out.

There are no actual human beings around to help you, just a bunch of lost people in a parking garage mumbling and cussing under their breath.

There was one car left in the economy section for me, and to say that it was not the car that I agreed to rent is an understatement.

The car that was waiting for me was a damn box on wheels. It was so embarrassingly small that I refused to take a photo of it — I was too humiliated to admit it was mine.

I’m 5’3”, and there’s no way anyone a half-inch taller than me would be able to fit in it. Anyone taller than me would be able to throw the stupid car over the bridge into the river.

Speaking of water, it turns out that there are things called drawbridges in the Northeast.

I’m afraid of water. I’ve gotten in bodies of water that I couldn't see the bottom three times willingly in my adult life, and I have no intention of ever doing it again.

I don’t like drawbridges.

And do you think they stop you on land if the bridge needs to come up? Of course not — they stop you in the middle of the effing bridge using a stoplight.

Shouldn’t there be like a real, live person with a flag or something telling you to stop or you’ll die?!?

By the way, for everyone reading this, there’s never been water in the river in my hometown in my lifetime.

Where I’m from, we drive on land, not above water.

I don’t like it.

And my rental car was so small that if had gotten into a minor fender bender that stupid car would have been smashed, and I would have veered off the bridge and ended up as fish bait.

I HATE WATER.

I don’t even know what to say about driving in D.C., except if you say your prayers, scream a few times, wear your seatbelt and sometimes close your eyes, you might survive.

It’s so bad that it’s funny.

You have to wing and a prayer it, which is fitting. It’s my preferred way of getting through life.

I also lost my car in the Kansas City airport parking garage on the way back home. I pride myself on having an excellent sense of direction and rarely getting lost.

I was lost this whole trip, down to the very last seconds of it.

I'm not sorry about it.

Shit happens.

Life goes on, if you let it.

I've learned several important life lessons over the past few years.

The newest one: Don't finance something you don't want to think about every month.

I bought a car in 2009. I paid it off in a few years, and I was pretty proud to drive a car that was paid off. My intention was to drive that car into the ground.

But then I had a huge tooth problem. I fixed the same three teeth not once, not twice, but three times, at a cost of $17,000.

A $7,000 bridge failed, an infection ate my jaw bone, I cried, I met a cool oral surgeon in Wichita and I spent $10,000 on implants.

When this $17,000 disaster happened, I realized I had to give up a few things. I couldn't get a new car like I planned three years ago and all of my house projects stopped.

My world basically stopped until I paid off that dental work. I took out a loan and used my car, which had more than 157,000 miles on it, as collateral.

It was not an ideal situation. An oral surgeon had to take the teeth out, not a regular dentist, so the surgeon might as well do the bone grafts too while he's up there.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I invested that money in my mouth. Getting implants is one of the best decisions I've ever made.

But I hated making that loan payment. Every month, I went through a cycle where I got really, really mad. Every month I'd think about what I went through, how many doctors I went through and how many pointless surgeries I endured for teeth that I ended up losing anyway.

I lost teeth that had five root canals, two gum surgeries, two crowns, an extraction and a bridge.

All of that work, all of that money, all of that time and all of that pain was for absolutely no reason.

But life goes on, if you let it. That was a few years ago and that loan amount has been dwindling.

At my last dental appointment, my doctor told me that I have no cracked teeth, no infections, and no major problems. We could talk about tooth whitening if I wanted to, he told me.

I've come a long way.

All is well on the tooth front right now, they told me. They said I could relax and not worry about infection eating bone in my face again.

--

Penny and I have been driving past cars recently. I found one I liked in town, and it was the first time that I actually got out of my car and snooped around in Toyota's parking lot.

And then that car disappeared off the lot overnight.

They sold my car!

I decided that it was time for new wheels. It's time to get rid of the tooth loan and start making payments on a shiny new thing sitting in front of my house (because it doesn't fit in my garage, haha).

I hated getting pissed off every month when I made that payment that went towards my mouth.

(And before anyone lectures me: Yes, I realize I should have paid cash for all of this. But does anyone really expect a $7,000 worth of dental work to fail after a year? Does anyone really plan on spending $17,000 on three teeth? I don't feel bad about getting a loan for this because no one has that much money sitting around for teeth.)

It's just time to move on and quit thinking about teeth.

It's time for new wheels.

My little niece was the first person to ride in my new car. She's 5, and she's the best kid ever (along with her sisters.)

She decided that my new car is a rainbow car.

I'll take it.

I don't like doing this stuff on my own. I don't like buying cars or sales people and cell phone companies and window companies that knock on my door.

But I didn't really have a choice, so I (figuratively) gritted my teeth for a few hours at the dealership until the car was MINE!

As they handed me the keys and I was walking out the door, Ashley McBryde started playing on the radio. And no, I'm not lying about this.

It was a perfect end to the perfect saga in my life.

Not bad for a girl goin' nowhere.

I don't know what to do when car doors do not open.

Scene 1:

I discovered yesterday on my lunch break that my car door did not open.

I don't know what to do when car doors do not open.

I crawled out the passenger side door, called the guy who fixes my car, then went and traded my Dad's perfectly fine truck for a car that doesn't have a functioning driver's side door.

(Cars are kind of like teeth. When it goes wrong, I know to call someone smarter than me.)

--

Scene 2:

While being laughed at by the guy who fixes my car, my Dad asks me if I want to lock my doors on my car while it's sitting in the parking lot of the fixing place.

Well, I said, if someone tries to steal it, they're going to have a really hard time opening the door.

Fyi, apparently if the hinge that holds the door open breaks, and you open your car door on a day where the wind is blowing 50 miles per hour, you can actually damage your front fender.

You can damage your front fender so much that the damn door will not open.

--

Scene 3:

My mom: Oh my God did you wreck your car? What did you hit?

Me: The wind. I hit the wind.

--

Scene 3:

My dumbass dog woke up at 4:30 a.m. and did not go back to sleep.

I worked up some tomatoes. I made a big breakfast. I did dishes. I watched the news curled up with a blanket and a space heater...all before 8 a.m.

Dog at 4:30 a.m.: Hey I have to go outside.

Dog at 4:32 a.m.: Oh my God it’s cold let me back in.

Dog at 4:33 a.m.: Hey since you’re awake do you wanna party?

When life inevitably falls apart in your hands.

A few weeks ago I was driving out of town. I felt something hit my leg, but I didn't think much of it.

I noticed a few days ago that I was missing a screw from my windshield visor in my car. Aha! That must have been what hit me in the leg.

Now, fast forward a few days. With the time change it seems like it gets dark at approximately 2 p.m.  (I'm whining and exaggerating, but still). I put off finding that little screw on the floor on my car.

I was driving earlier this week into the sun in town. I reached up to pull my visor down and the whole thing came off in my hands.

Ha, ha. There's probably a joke about things falling apart in my hands in there somewhere.

I finally fixed it last night (by myself, thankyouverymuch). Not having a visor reminds me of what it feels like to know you don't have electricity during a storm. You always flick on the light switch when you enter a room, because that's just what human beings do, regardless of how useless it is when the power is out.

I knew my visor was sitting in my passenger seat, but every time I got in my car over the past few days I reached my hand up and tried to use it.

Change is hard.

Writer's note: Pieces of my car might be falling apart, but my favorite kind of car is the one I don't have to make a car payment on. Have I ever mentioned that?

Grasshopper of doom.

Not that long ago I got a text message from a friend. A grasshopper found its way to her car, she said, and tried to kill her when she was driving.

I sympathized, but couldn't understand. It's a bug in a car. What's the big deal?

Well, I understand now. The grasshopper of doom thing happened to me yesterday.

I was going to the post office, living out my happy little life and minding my own business, when something flew past my head.

It was scary, and the grasshopper flew past me fast. I was stopped at a stop sign when it landed on my dashboard. It stayed there for a couple of seconds, then flew into my backseat.

How terrifying.

I looked in the back of my car when I got home last night, but couldn't find it. Just to be safe, I rolled all of my windows down in my car, in hopes that the stupid grasshopper of doom would hop its way out of my car and life during the night.

I ran an errand for work this morning, opened my car door, and looked down at the floor.

The grasshopper was sitting there, staring at me, mocking me.

A terrible first world problem enhanced and circled by Photoshop for dramatic effect.

I did what any other adult would do in this situation.

I threw my car keys at it. It didn't budge. I took one of my shoes off and threw it at the grasshopper. It still didn't move. I was thinking it would get scared and jump out of my car.

On second thought, can grasshoppers even get scared? Maybe my line of thinking was stupid.

Anyway, this morning I was standing in my work parking lot, keyless and shoeless, staring at a bug in my car. The only thing left to do was take a photo of it and send it to my friend, the one who understands how evil grasshoppers are.

They come out of nowhere and really do try to kill you when you're driving.

The thing is, I'm a strong, independent woman, except when it comes to bugs. When bugs are involved I become kind of weak and whiny.

Spiders and grasshoppers and other creepy crawlies? I'm not even going to pretend to be strong. There was an incident week involving spiders. Like a grown up, I noped it out of there and made someone else deal with it.

I can handle a lot of things in life.

Bugs I can't handle.

(I finally did get the grasshopper out of my car. It took both shoes.)

An important note

Good morning!

I'm bringing this post to you with glittery nails and a smile on my face.

It's wedding weekend! Not my wedding weekend, but whatever, it's wedding weekend nonetheless.

This post will not be about weddings, though. It's about something else that's important and something that has been years in the making.

This morning I made my second to last car payment.

You guys, we're on the home stretch. This is a big deal!

I bought my recent car, a Toyota, a few months after I paid my old car off. Said old car wasn't very reliable.

My old car broke down the day I moved to college. To this day, I still can't stop at the gas station where I spent three hours waiting for a tow truck (and crying). And if I'm driving with other people through that small town in Kansas, I ask them to please not stop there.

I still can't handle it.

After college, the air conditioner broke on my old car. My first summer after college was spent commuting to a neighboring town where my first grown up job was.

When I got off work every weeknight, I'd go to a convenience station, buy a cup of ice, go back to my car, dump the ice in a small towel, then put the towel on my head for the drive home.

That was my air conditioner.

I still view that summer as punishment for all the stupid stuff I did in college. It really, really sucked.

A year later, the air conditioner in that car stopped working again. My parents told me to come back to my hometown that weekend. I did, and they had pretty much cherry-picked my new car for me.

I bought it that day.

It was hotter than sin outside, and I drove up to the car dealership with my windows rolled down. The salesmen made a comment about the AC not working.

Shut up, sales guy. Just shut up and give me my new car.

My new car isn't new anymore. It needs some work after I pay if off, some dings and scratches probably need to get fixed, I need to upgrade my tunes so I can play iThings in the car, and some other things need fixed and replaced.

But those things can wait.

You guys, my car is almost paid off! I never thought I'd see that day. This is a big deal to me.

Hooray!