Problems with Starting

Today was long and expensive. My car has been having starting issues for a while now and me being the perfect procrastinator kept putting it off until this morning when I went to go to work and it wouldn't start. I tried and I tried because lately it had been taking like 50 turns to get it to turn over, but alas today not even 100 turns got it to start. I called work and told them I would be a little late, it was 10 minutes to 11am which is the time I usually start. Yes I don't start work until 11am and I get up around 10am everyday, that's why I bitch when I have to work at 9am. I know to some that's late but to me 9am is too early to even think, let alone have to be on top of my game at work. I have never been a morning person, even when there was Saturday morning cartoons, I wasn't a morning person but I forced myself to get up all extra early on Saturdays because the Smurfs rocked my world and the programming God's were smart to put them on first thing to get us kids up early, glued to the TV for the rest of the morning. But as usual, I digress.

Finally 20 after 11 I had to finally accept the fact that the car was not starting. I called work and one of the girls I work with volunteered to come pick me up. Since I had taken a week off for vacation I was still a little short on my quota and didn't want to have to miss any work. Harley came and it was only after she got to my house that we stopped to think about how the hell I was suppose to get home that night seeing as I was the closer that night, let alone how the hell I would get to work the next day. We messed around with the car for a bit and determined it was the starter, so we hit it with a hammer and lo and behold it started, HURRAY!! I made the decision that I would call mommy because I was a little strapped for cash. I had to get the car fixed today and before 6pm so I would at least be at work to close when everyone else was scheduled to leave. I called my manage and told him I would be in by 6om but I had to get the car fixed today because I wasn't going to be in this situation tomorrow.

I hate, HATE, H A T E, having to rely on anyone else, especially when it comes to my coming or going. I don't like the feeling of having my fate or schedule depend on someone else's. I hate the feeling of having to wait for another person so I can get to work on time, I start to get really anxious if they are even 2 minutes late when I have to be somewhere. I know this about myself so to save my friends from having to deal with the insanity that is me when I have to wait on them for a ride anywhere I don't let myself get into situations where I don't have control of when I can and can't leave. I could say this anxiety I feel comes from the fact my friends are notorious slackers who are late for everything, but I place the blame squarely on my mom.

My whole life my mom has always been late. for. everything. always. I learned at an early age I always gave mom the wrong time whenever I had to be anywhere. I would tell her I had to be there half an hour earlier than I actually had to be so that I was only 15 minutes late. There's a running joke in my family that for Thanksgiving and Christmas when we have it at my parents house that if Mom says dinner is at 4pm, we won't eat until at least 5pm. I live 45 minutes away from my parents, I usually don't leave until 15 minutes before the time I'm suppose to be there because as stated many times, I hate waiting around. I'm sure that's due to a lifetime of waiting on Mom. I spent a good chunk of my childhood waiting around for Mom. I'm amazed that my Dad hasn't gone crazy because he's the same as me, he won't wait around. Many a time he has just gotten in his truck, pulled it out of the garage and honked before Mom even realized he was outside already. More than a few times he's even just left, picked up dinner and brought it back before Mom has come up from her office in the basement to tell him she was ready. Dad is not a waiter.

After telling my manager and reassuring him I would be in by 6om I called my Mom. Thankfully Mom has her own business, it's a cleaning service (please admire the subtle irony in that for a moment if you've ever been to my house). She also has 4 cars that she gives to her teams that go clean for her. Mom doesn't personally go out and clean unless they are really really shorthanded. Don't let the fool you though, my Mom is a cleaning Nazi. Growing up one of my chores was the dishes, it wasn't enough to wash, dry and put away the dishes. I had to make sure the counters, table, stove and sink was completely wiped down as well and if I missed even one spot on the counter she zeroed in on and and I had to rewash all the dishes, redry them and put them back away along with rewiping down everything in the kitchen again. I think part of the reason I don't have a dresser to this day isn't because I have been procrastinating on actually buying one. No, I think it's due to the fact that dressers strike fear in my heart. When I was a kid if anything in my dresser drawers weren't perfectly folded, neatly side by side and in the proper drawer my Mom would dump every single drawer on my bed into one big pile then make me refold everything and put them all back into the proper drawer. I had one of those dressers that had 6 drawers! But enough of my childhood trauma for right now and back to my current grown up drama.

Being a little short on cash, I called my Mom, not really knowing what else to do and knowing that I had to get my car fixed today. Of course, her being my Mom, she as willing to help me but the catch was I had to drive my car down to her house to go to her mechanic and get the work done. She agreed to let me use one of her work vehicles to get to work on time if mine wasn't done before 5pm. Off to Mom's I went. She had to take my Grandma to a doctors appointment so my very punctual brother met me at the mechanics. He wasn't sure if they would be able to get a starter for my car because of course it being a sports car and apparently a kinda rare one the starter wasn't one that most people kept around. I learned much about my car today, like even though is says Dodge and make me believe it's an American car, it's not, the engine and all things under the hood are Mitsubishi. My car is Japanese American, I never knew it was so cultural. Also, it lies about it's age, the title says one year but the parts under the hood say it's a year older. That clinched it for me, my car is for sure a woman, even if she is green. Wait I stand corrected, she's jade green.

My brother, GI Bill brought me back to the parents where he still lives because he's in college and going back into the Army as soon as he gets his eye surgery done. We hung out for an hour then he had to leave. I ended up fixing his slow ass computer which only took about an hour. It's weird hanging out at my parents house when no one is there. I grew up in that house for the most part but I didn't feel like it was home anymore. I hadn't lived there in almost 15 years. Every room has been redone since I lived there so it's not like it even looks like the house I grew up in. Maybe it's just me but I felt out of place, almost like I was trespassing. A visitor who was just catching a glimpse of the life that my brother and parents had. Little notes and reminders on the corkboard in the kitchen that had nothing to do with me. It made me a little sad. The old saying is true you never can go home again, even for a few hours in the afternoon while waiting for your car to get fixed. I feel more at home hanging out at my sisters house by myself than I do at my parents house.

I ended up hanging out on the deck in the backyard talking to The Woman who informed me that I should have just called her first. I would have but I didn't because I figured 1. she didn't have a car to get me to and from work 2. she's always busy doing something or going somewhere and 3. I didn't want to bother her with my drama. They got my car done at 10 to 5 and it cost $360. The Woman also informed me that we probably could have just gotten the starter rebuilt for about $100. Great, so my paycheck next week goes to Mom to pay her back for the repair that The Woman could have gotten me for a third of that. There's a lesson here somewhere.