Cars...

I swear I just wasn’t meant to be a car owner. I drive okay – although Heather Locklear says that I drive like an old lady. I guess if sitting up straight in the car and coming to a complete stop at stop signs and signaling all your turns and lane changes and driving the speed limit makes you an old lady then call me grandma. It’s just the maintenance type things that I’d rather not be bothered with; things like unsticking frozen doors, washing the car, repairing dings, oil changes, investigating knocking noises, etc. Those things I just can’t get interested in. This past spring it was locking the doors. Since my frozen door incident during the winter months, I had gotten out of the habit of locking my car doors. That was until one day this spring I went out to my car and discovered someone had ransacked my car – really all they did was go through the middle arm rest and the glove box, but ransacked is how I felt after discovering the violation. Nothing was missing – because there is nothing in my car. After that I made it a point to lock my doors because although nothing was taken I was pissed that someone felt they had the right to go through my car! After it happened again about a month later, I became obsessive about locking my car doors, checking and re-checking the doors when I exited the car. So, on Saturday evening after returning home from work, I got out of the car, locked the door, closed the door and checked the door. Satisfied that the door was indeed locked, I went in the house. I spent Saturday evening home with Lionel and Maxwell crooning in the back ground while working on my latest puzzle (LOVE puzzles!) until the wee hours. Sunday my mother came and got me and we hung out. Sunday evening (24 hours since I’ve driven my car), I was to pick Heather Locklear up from her p/t job. I grab my purse and house keys, but can’t find my car keys. I search the house, even checking the grocery bag I brought in the house the night before. “Where the hell are my keys?” I double check all the places I just checked and same as before, no keys. “I didn’t leave them in the car.” I ran to the window and sure enough my car is still parked out front. After a few more minutes, I finally head out to check the one place that I am hoping NOT to find the keys. Well wouldn’t ya know my car keys are indeed where I left them the night before – in the ignition! I check the door and sure enough it’s locked. UGH! So, yes my car has been sitting outside for 24 hours with the keys in the ignition, ready and waiting for the taking. How does the saying go "God watches our for fools and babies"...I think in this case God was definitely watching out for me!

I was so upset I forgot to take a picture to share -but this is an example of what I looked like, except I had a scowl on my face and was jumping up and down kicking the door, thinking to myself, what would happen if I just broke the window.

While I was cursing myself for locking my door, I dialed up Roadside Assistance. In under an hour AUTO RESCUE was pulling up. (Auto Rescue was an old rusted Ford Aspire painted red with orange flashing lights mounted to the roof and Auto Rescue painted in yellow on the side. Interesting.) The gentleman that got out of the car (when he got I almost laughed out loud because I immediately thought about a clown car because he seemed to unroll himself out of the little car and the end result standing in front of me was a 6 ½ foot man) had my door open in under 5 minutes. I seriously had to refrain from throwing my arms around me kissing him dead on the mouth. Thinking that might not have gone over too well, I thanked him profusely, locked the car doors (checked that they were locked) and skipped into the house!