A day well spent

It's 2am here in Jersey and I'm still not sleeping, so I thought I'd fill you in on a bad day gone good.

I took my van in to my local dealership for servicing. The breaks are totally shot. In addition to that, I get a note from the department of motor vehicles telling me that after 30 years of driving, they have finally discovered that I never changed my name with the social security administration after I got married (nearly 20 years ago). I wasn't sure how that made me feel. "Cool, it took them 20-30 years but they finally got their computers to communicate with one another." or "Dayum, now I'll have to spend the next 3 months trying to prove my identity with the DMV." Now I'm worried how will the IRS interpret this? Will the INS be far behind? Then DYFS, and a bunch of other alphabets will be demanding I implant some chip in my.... Excuse me, where was I... Oh right, my van.

I wasn't always negligent with cars. Several years ago my husband was going through some phase and bought a Range Rover - the big one - 5 miles to the gallon. Geez, I remember thinking, "I could put 1 kid through college on one of those car payments." But you know men, when they go through some phase they buy big ticket items, we woman, we buy yarn or shoes. Anyways, one sunshiny day, one of my boys was goofin off in the back seat with his brothers in the lovely family Range Rover when it occurred to him that he should want to know what else could be achieved with Yoohoo. I vaguely remember the question from the 9 year old to the 7 year old, "just because it's in a bottle doesn't mean it will explode like soda." A declarative statement actually, but while I was contemplating that there was the issue with the road, the pot holes, other cars, traffic signs and the doctor's appointment that we were close to being late for - when yoohoo exploded all over the white interior - roof, bucket seats, carpet, stereo, toddler in car seat... you get the picture.

I had one chance to get this right - kill the kid or get rid of the "i wanna be young and single and back in New York' SUV. That's when we visited our friendly neighborhood Chrysler dealership and bought a van. Now, the kids can throw up in the gd thing, I don't care - we just run everybody through the car wash and voila, all clean!

Another thing I love about my friendly neighborhood car dealership is they don't judge. "So, how did your rims crack, again? I'd get at Paul Miller's You Wanna Look Rich Car dealership in Parsippany. My constant refrain sounded something like, "Because you bozos insist on using plastic and not titanium for rims, with all the pot holes in our unmaintained highways that my high New Jersey taxes are supposed to be taking care, I get plastic/fiberglas rims on a 70,000 dollar car and you wanna know why they keep cracking??!! I know why, so that I can keep paying $1500 dollars every time I go in for an oil change! It seemed that whenever I brought that gd Range Rover in for service, they tried to sell me some more crap or make me feel guilty because I let my children 'ride in the car'. Why they even tried to sell me clothes! What person in they right mind would walk around with a range rover logo on they blouse?? What they think I was, some rapper's wife??? Do you know how much yarn I could have bought?? But I digress...

The point of all of this is how totally calm I am now when visiting my local car dealership for service even though I am totally screwed because the family bus is out of service. So today, I reluctantly dropped my van off and tried to figure out how was I going to get the children to this practice and that game and this event and that meeting.... But the nice people at Wykoff Chrysler called a rental car company who came and delivered me a rental car! Duh. They do have those in suburbia too. Suburban life is still a bit of a challenge for me.

Tonight I get this nice message from my LYS that someone they knew spotted me in the car dealership and noticed that I was a friendly, happy person. (Kids, your mamma was right, it is always good to be on your best behavior!) That absolutely made my day!!