I only went to work for an hour and a half today to go to Yet Another Emergency Meeting (which thankfully was not that emergency-y after all) and turn in something I had due that day, and then left to go back to the rental car place. I’d told Mom she could just drive directly to Sac and meet me there, but she insisted on starting with me from campus and following me there. My, was she not pleasant that morning, because she insisted on wanting to try out driving the SUV so she wouldn’t have to ask a dealer to let her and reacted poorly when I said that I was pretty sure the rental agreement would not be okay with this. She basically hounded me until I gave in and drove to a neighborhood block of houses and let her.

Oddly enough, she was fine driving the thing and had no issue with push buttons at all. Either the woman continues to be a natural at cars (why did I not inherit this from either parent?) or she’s borrowed someone’s before. Then I got back in the car and could not get the parking brake to go off and I was all, “I didn’t even think there WAS a parking brake, how is it ON?” Answer: the parking brake is on the far left side of the car in the shadows rather than in its rightful place on the right hand center area of the car and Mom used it. Grr, argh.

As she followed me down the freeway--she insisted on that rather than GPS’ing--I had to stay on the phone line with her and she grumbled that I was going too slow and then speeded ahead, and then grumbled that she had to wait for me before she could go. Duh? She bitched that I was too slow at 65 mph. She bitched that I was too fast at 72 mph. No matter what I did, it was wrong. Grr, argh, and people wonder why it took me so long to drive?

Also while we were on the car to car phone, she said the following:
“I did something weird the other day. I had a coupon for Jack in the Box for two hamburgers. And I bought two hamburgers. I saved one in the fridge for later.”
Y’know, when someone says they did something weird the other day, I do not expect “bought an extra hamburger” to be weird whatsoever. How am I this woman’s child again? Where the fuck did I come from between the being weird and not being a natural driver? If I didn’t resemble my parents so much I’d sure as fuck wonder.

Anyway: dropped off the rental car, Mom drove me to the dealer, I picked up the car and paid $160 for the car exam, and then I drove it very slowly and terrifyingly in a U-turn to go back down the other end of Madison (an awful road to drive on) to go to the nearest dealership. I was terrified that the timing belt was going to break during that few miles/minutes of road driving at that point. Thank gawd it made it to its final destination.

Both the dealer (Dave) and his assistant dealer (CJ) were very nice. Dave got in a motorcycle accident/got beaten up by cops/had a stroke/was not diagnosed with such by Kaiser/sued and won, so CJ, a new employee and college boy football player, did the physical stuff for him. I asked about used cars and credit and Dave was all “eh, it’s going to be about the same cost either way, we might as well try something new and I can work the finances for you on it” and CJ took me out to three potential cars. I hit it off with the first one right away and did not even bother with the (larger, more expensive, fuck it) other two. Because this new car? I could drive it very easily right away. The push button worked in a sensible manner and turns off and on when one wants it to turn off and on. The mirrors are a reasonable side. It has reverse cameras and nice technological things going on (hell, the car can be its own WiFi now). Shall we say, we hit it off.

I also heard some amusing things about Dave’s personal life and marital issues and how well he gets on with Lioness and how his wife doesn’t even mind because it’s Lioness. That’s adorable. I sent Lioness a picture of the car to show to everyone at work.

They worked the financing so while I paid a lot of my own money/most of my savings, I only had to pay that much. They took my old car for $1000 even though it was basically worth $1. They got the financing down below $300 per month. Mom called our insurance guy and he got that taken care of. Voila, new car! The previous car was black and named “Sheba” by L back in the day. This one is white so it’s going to be “Princess Leia.” Har.

Mom thankfully stayed off the phone on the way back so I didn’t get harangued that way...and then she took off to go see her boyfriend....unfortunately with the contents of my car inside hers. Surprise! She said I’d have to pick them up next weekend when I’m visiting, which annoys me because I had some stuff I wanted sooner than that in there.

I went home and e-mailed a few people that I’d gotten the car (including Sheba’s previous owner L to let her know that Sheba had more or less passed on) and then Dawn picked me up to go out to storytelling tonight. She treated me to dinner to celebrate and then we picked up Loretta and headed over.

I didn’t perform tonight but that was fine, I was pretty much high on car and not really in the mood anyway! Notable moments from the show:

(a) The lady that told the story about her glasses awhile back told a story about picking up a hot hitchhiker with a guitar she was attracted to, but when he said, “Lemme get my ax,” she didn’t know the guitar slang, thought he was going to murder her and started plotting ways to crash/jump out of the car.... Awkward!
(b) A lady who owns a farm talked about losing her “white asses” (donkeys) and after getting them back, said she doesn’t drink but she got out this 35-year-old bottle of wine, chugged a drink, called someone to tell the story and then passed out.
(c) Mary told a story about pulling a prank on her neighbors who had just planted radishes--by putting full grown radishes into their vegetable beds and then gleefully waiting for them to notice. Thankfully, they took it well because in retrospect she wondered if that was the best idea.

I also passed on Scott’s info to Robin, so at this point it’s up to him to follow up on it. Mary was all, “his memory is really, really bad” to this. To which all I can do is shrug and go, “hey, I did what he asked me to do, now it’s on y’all.” If it happens, it happens, if it don’t, it don’t.

Dawn actually wants to sign up to do storytelling in the future here, and Mary said she wanted to work with her first before she does one. Yay Dawn!

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