While Jesse was changing the tire, some really impressive and obviously highly intelligent individual driving by slowed, rolled down his window, and shouted a loud, “Ha, ha, ha!” at us.

I’m not going to lie, I called him a nasty name.

(Quietly. In case he had road rage.)

Then, we realized our spare tire was low on air, so once it was on we drove to a nearby gas station and pumped it up. We made our way home, and on the highway again I put my flashers on and had to drive under the speed limit. Right before our exit, someone passed us and honked, and it was just icing on the cake. I’m not sure what part of “I have my flashers on specifically so that you will understand that I need to go slower than the speed limit because of a specific emergency situation I am experiencing” the person didn’t understand, nor do I understand how I inconvenienced this person in the slightest, seeing as how we were on an empty highway with absolutely no one in the passing lane, but oh well.

Life.

1.  A cheapskate,

or

2. A glutton for punishment.

One of the two.

I mailed some of my things home, since I didn’t have room in my suitcase. Or, more accurately, I didn’t have any more weight left. It’s not the packing I don’t like; it’s staying under the airline’s weight limit. (If you’re over, you pay like $100, and that is not an exaggeration.) On Saturday, the day before I left, I bought a suitcase scale so I could try to get as close to the fifty-pound mark before mailing off the rest of my stuff.

By the way, this is what the box looked like when it arrived here…nice, hmm?

Sunday, having sent my box the day before, I finished packing and weighed the suitcase again just to make sure all was good.

The way the scale works, you attach it to the suitcase and then pick it up and look at the little dial to see how much the suitcase weighs. This is a little tricky when you’re by yourself because you have to hold the suitcase up, keeping it still, and look at the scale at the same time, which is of course pointing the exact wrong direction. This is even trickier when you have a bad back and the suitcase is fifty pounds.

Excuse me, fifty-four pounds.

Crap.

This was a half hour before my shuttle to the airport was to arrive. I was checking as a formality, since I was certain I had covered my bases the day before.

Panicked re-packing of the suitcase and carry-on items ensued.

To make sure I was getting an accurate reading and wasn’t looking at the scale wrong, I set up my camera on its self-timer and took pictures of the scale as I heaved the suitcase up.

I did this probably a dozen times. My back was screaming at me. Finally, I couldn’t do it anymore, and I looked at what had to be the last picture and realized I’d taken too much out.

Sigh.

Somehow, I got everything squared away before the shuttle picked me up, whisking me and a group of strangers off to SFO and our late-night flights. Both my flights home were uneventful, and then Jesse was waiting at the airport with a flower and a big grin and all was well with the world. He carried all my bags for me and then drove me home (I slept the whole four hours, except for a couple breaks to wake up and groggily eat some trail mix).

This week, I’ve been getting used to real life again, slowly. I haven’t driven in a month, and the other day I sat at a light for probably three solid minutes before I remembered I could turn right on red. And yesterday I went to the beach to visit with my godsister. I haven’t been to the beach all summer, since I had mono by the time it was warm enough to go. I knew my pale skin would be prone to burn, so I went crazy with the sunscreen–and still got ridiculously burnt. Funny thing is, my face, arms, and back aren’t burned at all, but from collarbone to toes my skin is an angry shade of lobster. I’m going with long skirts right now as much as possible, so if you see me you probably won’t guess that I am in a world of burning pain.

And that’s about it. The heat is awfully hard to get used to again. (The burn doesn’t help that any.) I am missing the sights of the city, the ability to walk a couple blocks and get a fabulous plate of pad Thai, the bay, the bridges, the public transportation, my beautiful apartment (pictures to come).

But, now I’m back with the person who is my life, and that trumps everything else, and makes it all worth it. Of course, I look like a tomato, but somehow he doesn’t seem to mind.

This was especially important because I decided I’d go off coffee, starting this weekend. Now that I’m not getting up at 5:30 most mornings, I don’t really need the caffeine, and with the fairly regular jolts of panic I have whenever I think about the logistics of July I figure the less stimulants going through my body on any given day, the better.

So, today is the big day.

And last night was my shot at getting fully rested and ready for it.

At some point–oh, around 3:25 a.m.–I was dreaming about something, and in my dream a phone began to ring. It kept ringing. And ringing. And then I woke up and realized it was our real phone and it was ringing in the middle of the night. Which meant that someone had surely died.

I got out of bed so fast you would have thought I’d been ejected. I ran to the phone but didn’t get there before the answering machine picked up. I glanced at the caller ID, saw that the number was “Anonymous/Private,” and then listened as the caller hung up after hearing Jesse announce our phone number on the pre-recorded message.

Wrong number.

My heart was racing, and I was wide awake now. I looked at the clock and saw that it was just before 3:30.

It took forever to get back to sleep.

And now. No coffee.

Word to the wise: You may want to steer clear of me this weekend…

See, Azalea Fest can be expensive. Between parking and the huge variety of over-priced unhealthy “food” options, there’s no need to actually purchase something of value in order to spend money. But Jesse and I were living large, so we decided to eat lunch at AF and snag some ice cream afterward.

I wanted a hot dog. I figured that would be a fairly inexpensive option, considering the overpriced seafood platters and the $7 bacon burger sandwiched between two doughnuts.

But all the hot dogs we found were $3. Three dollars! For a hot dog!

I fancy myself a person who does not pay $3 for a hot dog, no matter the circumstances, so I embarked on a search to find a cheaper dog. Jesse and I walked up and down the main food street, asking everyone their hot dog prices.

And finally, I found it. A $2.50 hot dog. Success! (Yes, it’s just fifty cents. But still. It’s the principle that counts.)

We ate our $2.50 hot dogs under a parking deck (shade) and felt like we were living life on the edge. Taking risks. Eating hot dogs at the street fair. Getting sunburned in April and not caring. And now, time for dessert.

We paid far too much for ice cream, though, and it didn’t even taste good. Can you imagine? How can ice cream not taste good? Is it possible to water-down ice cream? I ate every bite of it, though, because I had paid a whopping $4 on a dipped cone, and by George I was eating the whole thing, like it or not.

Well, at least we’d found the cheapest hot dogs there.

Ha.

It didn’t hit me for a while. We went to church and went to dinner with friends and came home and went to bed.

And then, my pulse started racing. I felt hot. My stomach started complaining. And so began the night of regular bathroom trips. Up and down I went, all night, acutely aware of how early I had to get up the next morning. I watched the clock hit 1:00, 1:30, 2:00, 2:30. And on. After enough trips though, and after the “cheap” hot dog had long come up, I knew I would have to call in sick for at least my first class.

I got a few hours of fitful sleep, woke up, and managed to hold down a couple spoonfuls of Rice Krispies and some water. Weak as a kitten, I managed to drive to work, teach three classes, and hold two and a half hours of office hours. I graded papers and journal entries. I hesitantly ate a small peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I drank more water. I cursed the $2.50 hot dog. Repeatedly.

Then I came home and sorted laundry, but before I could put a load in the washer, I collapsed in bed and promptly passed out.

Moral of the story: Saving money is good, but don’t go for the cheap hot dogs.

We got our cars back from the shop. (Both of them are having problems again and have to go back.)

I washed mine, and it looked nice. (It’s spring. I knew it was futile. Now, the car is fuzzy and yellow.)

Our friends gave us a washing machine–and it doesn’t leak! (Now it appears our dishwasher or kitchen sink is leaking into the dining room. Our wall, baseboards, and carpet are suffering. Source of the problem TBD.)

Sarah Vowell’s got a new book coming out. (No bad news with this one!)

Aaand, our washing machine is leaking.

Aaand, I have a sore throat.

It just keeps coming.

I just want to let that set in for a moment. (You can re-read the earlier post about my car now if you’d like.)

So, yeah, our one working car, check-engine light, no acceleration, the very day after my Car Disaster/Freak Out. I pulled off to the side of the road, thankful that I wasn’t on a bridge, and called my dad once more to cry about my bad luck with cars. I was terrified to continue driving, convinced I was about to ruin another one of our cars. (Two for two!) Dad reassured me and helped me calm down, and I managed to get back on the road and to my destination.

Tomorrow, when Jesse picks up my car, he’ll drop his off.

There are times when you wonder if you’re the butt of some kind of cosmic joke. This would be one of those times.

However, just before the second to last bridge on my way home, traffic stopped. Parking. Lot.

I then, conveniently, remembered that my car has, shall we say, a little problem. Lately, if the car idles too long it heats up. It’s a fairly easy problem to forget, as I’m not often in bad traffic, and I had been putting off the repairs. I figured I could make it to spring break (in a week and a half) when I’d have the time to get it fixed. Plus, our February budget took a beating with the new tires my car required and the whole coyote ordeal. March would be kinder, I hoped.

As I inched my way toward the bridge, I saw the temperature gauge go up. And up. I knew if I could just get the car moving, it would cool down and everything would be fine. I just had to get over this bridge. The traffic, however, was just not budging.

(Oh, and I should mention that the bridge has no real emergency lane or shoulder.)

It took nearly fifteen minutes to get from the light to the base of the bridge. The engine was still heating up. By now, I was past any place I could pull over and let it cool down. I just needed to get over the darn bridge.

Sharon called, as she’d heard I was stuck in traffic. I told her about my car, told her I was close—so close—that once I got over the bridge I’d be fine.

On the very top of the bridge is when I smelled the burning. And saw the steam.

I panicked, still on the phone with Sharon, saying something like, “My car is smoking! My car is smoking! My car is smoking! Oh nooooo!” and she told me to get off the bridge and pull over, so that’s what I tried to do. I turned off the engine and put it neutral, coasting little by little down the bridge.

“Do you have your emergency flashers on?” Sharon asked.

Oh! Right! I switched them on.

I watched the steam, smelled the burning, cars boxing me in, nowhere to go, and kept coasting. It felt like twenty minutes, but it couldn’t have taken me that long to get off the bridge and pull over at the first opportunity.

I was fifteen minutes from home. I was so close. I had gotten off the bridge. And I had ruined my car.

“I’ve ruined my car!” I wailed. “Dad told me to get it fixed and I didn’t!”

Sharon said soothing things in a soothing tone of voice and told me to call my dad. Warren had already called Jesse to tell him what happened. All I needed to do was wait a little while.

Meanwhile, the car kept smoking.

I called Dad. Up until this point, I had not cried, but as soon as my father picked up the phone, I blubbered: “I have a problem with my car!” (And, yes, every sentence I spoke did have an exclamation point at the end.) What I was really saying was: Why do you live several states away and how can that stop being the case because I need my dad and I’m homesick and growing up is hard! (I’m not sure he got all that from the sentence I actually managed to get out.)

He told me I needed to make sure the car had water in it. By now, traffic was picking up, so cars were speeding by at nearly sixty miles per hour. I was beyond frazzled. All I could think about was the accident I’d been in in Florida, seeing the headlights in the rearview mirror and being able to do nothing to stop them. The truck just hadn’t seen us. I wondered how well the cars coming over the bridge could see me.

So, water. I didn’t have water. I had a water bottle with about two drinks of water swishing around the bottom. Not enough, obviously. Cars kept speeding by. Sometimes, I can still hear the sounds of the truck hitting our car just as clearly as the night it happened. I try not to think about it. But tonight was one time when the sound echoed loud in my ears. I needed to get away from this bridge.

Dad then had the particular misfortune of asking, “Hasn’t your car had this problem for the past couple weeks now?” (To my ears: Didn’t I tell you to get it fixed already?)

Not. Good. The blubbering took on a new dimension of desperation.

I know I’m not good at taking care of my car. I don’t keep it washed as much as I should. I go over on my oil changes. I’m bad at basic maintenance. I ran out of gas at least twice during college. And my yard is full of weeds and I’m sure behind the oven is really dirty and there is this piece of my back door that has kind of rotted out that I should have fixed by now. Apparently, I have a bad habit of augmenting my father’s actual words with layers of my own disappointment. I suppose the conversation I was having and the conversation he was having were two totally different conversations.

I cried, and Dad tried to get me to calm down.

I watched as a police car drove past me. Didn’t even slow down.

I hung up the phone and took a deep breath, telling myself that Jesse would be by any minute now. We hadn’t carpooled (thankfully), and he had left a little later than I had. I watched the cars coming up behind me and looked for his. Then, I put the obvious two and two together: have Jesse get water on his way. Duh.

By now, I had been stuck for about twenty minutes or so (it was hard to tell). Traffic was getting faster. The sun was setting. I re-buckled my seatbelt, imagining a distracted driver slipping just a little too far to the right and slamming into me. I heard the sound—the metal on metal, the bang, the airbags exploding. I wondered if airbags deployed the same with the car off. I wondered if I’d ruined my car and rendered the airbags useless. I looked behind me, hoping to see the headlights of Jesse’s car.

I called Jesse to have him get the water, and he said, “Oh. I’m already home.”

…

…

“You left me?!”

Now, the hysterics that had been showing themselves in spurts really let loose. I imagined him driving past my car, emergency flashers and everything, heading straight on home.

It turns out, he hadn’t driven by me. He’d gone a different way home and had missed me altogether. But, he would be right there with water. Just hang on.

I hung on. I watched as another police car drove past. Without stopping.

Sometimes I wonder if some brave part of me was broken in that accident, turning me into the kind of person who imagines the sound of two cars slamming into one another, who doesn’t want to get out of the car to prop up the hood. Then, I think–what would I do? Pour imaginary water into that dirty white plastic tube? I know where it is. I would have been able to do it on my own. But, no water. And I just wanted to be home.

Finally, after what seemed like three months, but was probably only fifteen minutes, Jesse showed up and put water in my car and after a few tries got it to start and drove it home while I followed in his car. As I walked inside our house, I wailed, “I ruined my car!”

Let’s be honest: I have an old car. Fourteen years old. And things were bound to happen. But what was not supposed to happen was my failure to fix a minor problem, allowing it to become a potentially major problem. This is not in the budget, I thought, not when we’re trying so hard to save money, not in the middle of a stressful semester, a week and a half before spring break, when all I’m trying to do is just hang in there, just make it. I’ve got a little less energy and emotional resources to deal with the normal stressors in my life right now; this was too much.

I whined and blubbered some more, but there was dinner to fix and our friends were coming over (I assured Sharon that I needed the distraction). Of course, the moment S. started to laugh and smile, I felt better. Dinner turned out well (how that happened, I’ll never know). We watched American Idol and added our own critiques. By the time they left, I was feeling much better.

We’ll take the car to the shop tomorrow. Fingers crossed for “not ruined.”

What’s that saying? March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb? I thought that was supposed to be the weather. Here’s hoping the end of the month is more lamb-like.

We were in the right lane. The animal was in the left. Later, I figured it was a coyote, but in the moment there was no time for thought. The collision did not happen in slow motion. One moment, we see the face, the stunned eyes, and the next moment we see the coyote turn in our direction and run directly into our car.

From there, it was all color and sound. A flash of sandy brown. Headlights on asphalt. The dark night around us. The loud, deep sound of the impact. The brakes. Skidding to a stop on the side of the road. A dragging sound that made us feel sick with dread at what we’d see when we got out of the car.

The dragging sound wasn’t the animal, to our relief, though it was clear immediately that the impact had been fatal. We smelled something sour as we inspected the car. The bumper was dragging the ground. Something plastic was slouching onto the front wheel. The condenser was crushed in. The fog light was dangling.

We got back in the car to see if we could drive it. Everything seemed to be working, but as we pulled onto the highway the dragging sound became louder and louder. We pulled over again and searched the trunk for something we could use to “fix” the car enough to make it home before midnight. We found some zip ties. I held a flashlight as Jesse tried to get the plastic thing away from the wheel. The flashlight was more of a strobe light, though, because I was shivering from the cold and the nerves. Cars sped by us, some not bothering to switch lanes. The sound of the impact was still ringing in my ears. I turned my back to traffic. If we were going to be hit and killed on the side of the interstate, I didn’t want to see it.

Attempt #2: the noise was somewhat different, but still there. We couldn’t drive more than 45 miles per hour without the sound becoming worse. Cars passed us too fast for our comfort. We pulled off at the next exit and found a street light that illuminated the dirt parking lot of a junk shop. I found some tape in the trunk, and Jesse got to work on the bumper. As I walked around the car, still shivering, the wet dirt crunched beneath my shoes, and the scene played itself over and over–the eyes, the quick turn the wrong way, the flash of sandy brown fur, the boom of impact. I felt sick. It was getting late, and we had to be up by 5:30 the next morning. I had four classes to teach. And there was the coyote. Something so alive, now dead. And it was our fault.

Two police cars pulled up and asked if we needed any help. By now, Jesse was nearly finished with the tape, and we thanked them but said no. Soon, we were back on the interstate, the physical sound gone, but the memory sound still there.

At home, we were dazed. The argument was long forgotten. I finished some last-minute preparations for classes the next day and we went to bed.

Monday, I somehow made it through all my classes and office hours without thinking too much about Sunday night. It was raining when I left work, and I had left my umbrella in the car. I picked up Jesse and then we picked up the cats from the boarder. On the way home, traffic was awful. We sat, almost parked, waiting to cross the bridge. My windows fogged up, as they do sometimes, and since my defroster doesn’t work there was nothing to do other than keep wiping the inside of the windshield with our hands. Eventually, we found that it helped to roll down the windows. Our arms and legs got rained on, but the windows cleared some. And then Oliver decided to poop in his kennel. We were less than half way home.

If you were wondering how miserable it is to drive twenty minutes in a car that smells of cat poop, let me assure you: it’s not fun. But there was something about the combination–the rain, the windows, our damaged car at home, and the cat pooping in his kennel–there was something about it. You just had to laugh. You know, one of those laughs that says, “Well, it’s this or sobbing.”

Then, it was home, clean the kennel, go to Harris Teeter for subs, watch a movie, fall asleep half way through. Get up the next day, call the insurance company, get the rental car. Things are better today because it’s sunny and we’ve got to pay $250, but without our insurance we’d be out more than $3,000. So, it could have been worse. (A collision with an animal is considered an “act of nature,” apparently.)

While I was waiting for the rental car, an older man regaled me with animal-collision stories. He told me about a deer that peeled back the entire roof of a woman’s small car. He told me about a couple who hit a bear with their brand-new truck and were out some $20,000. And a deer that hit him after jumping straight over a very tall fence.

It could have been much worse. But for the coyote, whose face I still see, it could not have been. It could not have been any worse.

Jesse's car: with less bumper than before.

Check back tomorrow for the story that goes with this picture.