When Entropy Attacks, Part the First

So, Dad is home from Guatemala. This is a good thing. Mostly because he almost couldn't go.

Imagine you are asked to go on a trip to another country. You say, "Yes, of course, I would love to go!"

Then what do you do? FIRST. The first thing. Before you pack your bags, before you buy your airline ticket...what do you do?

I'll give you a minute...

In Which I Am Afraid of my Own Teeth

If you don't follow me on Twitter, you miss things. I'm sorry, but it's true. Here is a taste:

Fancy Phone Is Fancy

I can blog from my phone now. And I am doing that. The phone blogging, it is HAPPENING. 

Also, I am watching The Avengers. This is called multitasking.

There is still no car news. I do not imagine that there will be any car news for at least the next few weeks. This week, Dad comes home from Guatemala, if he even made it there in the first place...we have heard nothing from him at all since he arrived at the airport. He and Mom then leave almost immediately for one of the Carolinas. I keep forgetting which one. What that means is that there will be no car shopping during that time, as I decided after the last go of it that Dad's help would be of use.

I'm not upset about it. This gives me time to de-stress, get over the shock of the accident, and get started working on some of the big, exciting things I've got going on at work. By the time Dad is home, I may even be looking forward to finding a car.

Meanwhile, mobile blogging! Let me know what this looks like on a real computer screen, because I have my doubts.

Pass the Tissues: In Which I Feel Sorry for Myself and Have a Weep

Note: In this post, I am going to gripe a bit. A lot. If you don't want to read about a grown woman crying about cars and money, this isn't the post to read. Go read the post about my first attempt at the 30 Day Shred. It's actually funny. This post isn't. Unless you like laughing at me when I cry. Then I guess it is...

If you don't want to read about me crying, you can read this friendly summary about my car hunt!

Laura's Car Hunt

Today I test-drove a pretty car that worked. It was nice. It was too nice. It was Expensive.

I am too po for that car. I am so po, I cannot afford the last two letters of "poor." I cannot buy Pretty Car, which was a Ford Fusion. So, I am asking Car Guy to look for an older car that is less equipped than Pretty Car, but still the same make and model. I am hoping for the best.

And if you keep reading, you'll see what hoping for the best looks like, inside my fatalistic brain:

Goodbye Little Green Ford...

Yes, the title of this blog post should be sung a la Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." I have no regrets.

To celebrate Father's Day properly, I took Dad out in my car and we crashed. Then I stress-cried for two hours, because that's how I solve problems, apparently. The next day, I went to visit my car, and it looked like this:

Yep.

Dad and I are unharmed, as are the people in the other car, so there's that. But fixing the little green Ford would cost far more than the car is worth...so yeah.

Let's have a moment of feeling sad for my little friend with wheels on.

...

....

...

Okay then. Dad is in Guatemala now, building things for people. I would not trust him if he were left with a hammer and nails unsupervised, even if he were building a board with nails sticking out of it and not someone's roof or house, but there you go.

He left me his car, which used to be my grandpa's car. And as I drove to work yesterday (on fumes, because he'd departed for Guatemala with no gas in his car whatsoever), I realized that I was braking Fred-Flinstone-Style, with my foot dragging on the ground underneath the car. Or at least, that's what it felt like.

"There are no brakes in this car," I thought. "It is just like my car accident, only worse because now I know what it is like to slam into something made of pain."

Luckily, the problem was low brake fluid and was quickly solved. BUT STILL.

Dad had avenged himself by staging an Agatha-Christie-esque murder plot. He is out of the country, which is the PERFECT ALIBI. Also, does Guatemala extradite? 

Well, I thwarted his plan. Next step: Finding a new(ish) car. A car that is new to me. A car that doesn't suck. This could take years. 

And when Dad gets back home, I'll have to be extra vigilant to make sure I'm not murdered while I hunt for a car. 

Father's Day

It's Father's Day, so it's time for me to tell my father how awesome he is and how lucky I am to have him as my dad.

Once, at the condo where Dad's parents live, we were out behind the house at the big pond that was the water feature the condo-owners all paid tons of money to look at out their back windows. Fish lived inside the pond, so I had taken my little cousins outside (they were visiting from Colorado), so we could all look at the fishes.

The fish ate the bread we brought, then my aunt came outside with my dad and my grandparents, and one thing led to another, and Dad picked me up and threw me into the pond with all the fish. The fish then swam all around me and nibbled at my arms and legs and it became evident to me that, given the sheer number of fish in the pond, I was sitting in a soup made of their poos, rather than water.

Worse, because the whole family was going out to eat (which was why Aunt Susie, Dad, Grandpa and Grandma all came outside in the first place--to tell us it was time to leave), Dad chucking me in the water forced everyone to wait for their food while I took a shower to remove the mud (fish poo), then because we were an hour and a half from home, I had to wear my grandmother's clothing to dinner out. And since I was maybe 12, I was mortified.

I even had to borrow shoes.

And when I was little, when Dad woke me up in the morning, he used cubes of ice. Or he grabbed the headboard and footboard of my bed and shook the bed violently, screaming "EARTHQUAKE" at the top of his lungs. This occurred often enough that when we had an actual earthquake, I woke up just enough to say, "Don't be a jerk," and then went back to sleep.

Because Dad used to slam his face against my window-screen every time he went for a walk in order to terrify me, the sound of someone breaking into my home through a window to rob and murder me will never frighten me or wake me up if I am sleeping. So that's convenient.

I bet other people's dads don't give them all these great stories they can tell on their blogs. I bet other people had boring dads who made them eat their peas and never toppled their chair over at the dinner table because they were leaning back on two legs. My dad is awesome. And I am lucky to have him.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.