I Wrote This Post From a Firestone.

Today I had lunch plans for the second time in 2014. So exciting, this leaving the house during the workday thing. I hopped in Vicki, turned the ignition ... and nothing. Not even those little clicking noises that tell you all hope is not lost.

Pffft. My friend picked me up so we could still see each other and we talked about how like, yeah, I can handle this. (Beloved is out of town and has been during the week since basically the end of January). So FUCK YEAH WOMAN POWER.

Vicki was in the garage, but I remembered how when I was in college and won a trip to the Bahamas at a sit-through-our-time-share-pitch-and-win-fabulous-prizes meeting and we drove 24 hours from Iowa to the tip of Florida and left the car and when we got back three days later the car was dead and surrounded on all sides and we begged some guy with a jump pack to bail us out after freaking out. And Beloved looked at me with that face he makes when confronted with my spectacular lack of common sense and asked, "Why didn't you just roll the car back?"

So today! I knew what to do.

I rolled Vicki back and out of the garage, and my neighbor came over and gave me a jump, then I left the little angel jumping on a different neighbor's trampoline and drove to the auto parts store. He took one look at Vicki (which is disgustingly filthy because I was going to wash her tonight but OH BEST-LAID PLANS) and groaned. "A convertible," he said, and I knew this meant bad things. Yes, the battery is located inside the wheel well and you have to put it on a lift and take the tire off to get to it. Oh, and by the way every nearby mechanic is closed because it's six o'clock.

I bought the battery anyway, thinking if I had it with me then all I had to do was beg the one still-open mechanic in town to throw me a bone.

Except I forgot myself and shut off Vicki when I got to the auto parts store.

So the man got the little jump pack, but that was dead. Then he got his own car and gave me the second jump in a half hour and then I drove all the way across town.

The Firestone people took one look at Vicki and said, "Oh. A convertible." And I said, "Please, please. This is the only way I have to get home to my child who is hungry." Because that was the most guilt- ridden way I could think to say it. And they told me it will take an hour and almost $100 and I was all HEY, WHO CARES?

And now I'm here in Firestone.