Driving adventure #9 did not go as planned.

Today was supposed to be easy. Booking a car for two hours on a Friday to just do a major grocery store trip. Usually every 2-3 months I have to get Mom to drive me to a decent supermarket to stock up on things for cheaper than the hippie store within walking distance of me. This couldn't be too hard, I thought. I won't have much time to go shop or do anything else due to taking a daylong class all weekend, I need to get this week's practice in, no biggie, right?

Hah. No. No, it was one of those driving days again. I've driven this model before--to the psychic fair and for a weeknight practice--but this time it was acting weird.

#1: The Zipcars with keys have some kind of fob string doodah holding the keys in the car. When I got in and touched it, the keys broke off. Car was still usable and I had to report it to Zipcar, but that was the least of my issues.

#2: The car was nearing the point of being low on gas and I thought, "Hey, I can fill it up. I've done this before. I've got the time. Why not?" So I started heading to the gas station before I went to the grocery store. The AC was blasting when I turned on the car. I turned it off. Then somehow the car started STEAMING THE HELL UP as I was driving. For the record, the weather is in the 60's here and there is no reason to have a steamy car. I thought, "Hey, I can make it to the gas station," but by the time I got to the parking lot nearest the gas station I really couldn't see shit and barely found a parking space. I don't know if the climate control stuff on the car is broken or if it's just me being an idiot here, again. But probably it's the latter, because 99% of the time, it's always me.

I went to the car manual AGAIN and figured out how to defrost the car. Then I went to the gas station, where #3: I couldn't get the pump to take the Zipcard. Let's not even get into how long it took me to park the car on the right side and close enough to put gas into it, either. Eventually found another pump to take it.

By the time all of this was done, it was about 5:45 p.m. and I was not remotely feeling confident enough about how the car was running today to try to run to the grocery store, then run back to my house, then get it back on time. I was feeling semi-scared to drive it anyway, but trying to get this done in time? Hah. Didn't seem good. So I ended up going to Rite-Aid and grabbing random junky groceries, then returning the car early. Before I got out, I made the call to Zipcar, kind of incoherently because the phone kept pinging me with messages while I was trying to leave voice mail.

Then as I got out, #4: I lost the phone, it hit the ground and broke into its component bits. I found the front and the battery pretty easily, but the back had...uh.... disappeared between the two cars. I busted out my keychain flashlight and ended up doing a lot of crawling around on the ground (in a nice outfit) trying to find the thing, which had flung itself pretty far under the other neighboring Zipcar.

Well, at least I got the phone back together and managed to find a piece of paper and pen to leave a note for the next driver as to what happened. And made it home without further disaster. But I am home drinking again, so that tells you something.

Seriously, WHY MUST DRIVING BE SO HARD? Sometimes it seems like butter and other days it's like a comedy of fucking errors of things going wrong and me being scared to be on the roads. Again, how the hell am I going to handle this on a regular basis? If I ever handle this?

Oh, and adding to the fun: I got a call from Mom at work this morning saying that some friend of hers has a $2000 car she's willing to sell. What the hell kind of car it is, I am not exactly sure because Mom doesn't seem to have uh, nailed down too many details. It might be green, it might be a Honda or Mazda, it has no AC (ergh) but has a sunroof. I got this message and thought, "Oh hell, I'm not even ready to deal with this car stuff..." I had pretty much already decided I wasn't going to try to bother getting one for awhile, or a year or something. I feel all sprung and rushed into things when I don't feel ready to deal with making a giant commitment after all yet. Mom is supposedly going to look at it tomorrow for me and see how that goes, and she put in calls to the lady to find out what kind it is and to the insurance guy for obvious reasons.

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