2010 – Page 5 – The only certainty is bad grammar

How to make a bad week worse

Published: October 16, 2010 / Updated: October 16, 2010 Crystal god, humor, medium, sh*tty things that happen to me

I bounced my tithe check.

There. I said it. It’s out there. I’m a horrible human being.

I can’t even clear a check to God.

What is WRONG with me?

To make a short story long, it all started when my car decided to puke all over my life and then fart in my face, and so I had to give a mechanic $450. This was all right though because I had $551 in my bank account — $50 of that was for my tithe check, and the other $51 was to live on.

I was flying high have myself a Big and Rich time with all my spare change, but then, I got stupid. I decided to use some of my $51 to put gas in the loner car I had from the mechanic and to eat.

And then, after a series of events involving a hose, steering fluid, and a lack of parts in the warehouse, my mechanic said he was going to be done with my car on Tuesday, but then he couldn’t finish till Wednesday.

And, he tried to be nice and give me a rental car, which he assured me would not cost me a thing. Except the rental car place made me give them a $50 deposit (the amount of my tithe check). They told me it would be put into my account as fast as it was taken out, and seeing as how they took it out in like 3 seconds, I went with it.

Dumb. Idea.

So then, of course it took like 2.5 days for the $50 to go back into my account and in that 2.5 days my tithe check went through. Of course.

OF. COURSE.

And I thought for about four minutes that the bank was going to be nice and pay it and just charge me $32 for the mishap. But no, no. My credit isn’t good enough to earn services like that. So instead, the bank just sent the check back to the church and decided that for its trouble it should charge me $32 anyway.

And now, I have to explain to my pastor at the church where I work that I really am a decent human being and I don’t suck at life and that I will now be giving all of my future donations in cash.

On the upside, I’m pretty sure one of the Bible’s big themes is forgiveness.

My car doesn’t shake, grind, or stall anymore.

October 13, 2010 Crystal humor, medium, sh*tty things that happen to me

First the good news. My car is totally safe for children and other living things now. So, umm, YAY!

Now, the horrible, craptastic news. It cost me like $3 million to get it that way. Credit where credit’s due, the mechanic I went to is a blessed man. He did a lot for me so he didn’t have to send me on my way in a car that would probably disconnect from itself mid-highway and kill me and anything else in a 10-foot radius.

But ya, like I said, $3 million. Pretty much name a thing on a car, and then put the word “broken” in front of it, and that’s MY car.

It all started on a sunny October day when I decided the fact that my breaks were grinding probably meant I should finally take my car to a real mechanic as opposed to the guys at Farm and Fleet. And well, it was all downhill from there. Pun intended.

Turned out I needed a new set of breaks, two new tires (my old ones were literally splitting apart), new ball bearings, and like 4 other things. Also, all my break lights were out.

So, I got the work done and turned over all of my life savings to the man. And then, on a handshake and a prayer, the mechanic decided to let me pay for the rest of the work in monthly payments, which would be a silver lining if I didn’t have to pay the man so much stupid money.

Ug. I HATE car repairs.

I hate them, I hate them, I hate them.

I HATE THEM!!!

I cried about the whole thing a little yesterday, but then I pulled myself together, got a good night’s sleep, and put everything in perspective – for a relatively small price my car now won’t kill anyone.

And, I’m sure like 70 percent of you are out there screaming, “Crystal, GET A NEW CAR!” And I have just 3.5 words for you: want to co-sign?

I have to admit, it is nice that my car doesn’t shake all time anymore, and that I’m not as worried about it stalling at stop lights, and that it doesn’t make a horrible grinding sound every time I stop. It’s nice. Sure, I still need a new starter, my check engine light is still on, and the side mirror is still connected with black duct tape. But like I said, it’s totally safe now!

Yay.

About last night

October 5, 2010 Crystal feminism?, humor, medium

So yesterday my Aunt Flo stopped by. And she’s kind of a bio-tch, so I needed some Advil.

I knew me and my roommate had like a 200-count jar of Tylenol somewhere in the apartment though, and that in 200-count bottle of Tylenol there was some random Advil pills mixed in. So, at about 3a.m., when Flo started to through her usual fit, I went to the bathroom to grab a couple red capsules.

Except I couldn’t find them. Anywhere.

I looked in the cabinet under the sink. And in the one to the right of it. And in the one to the left of it. And I pulled all my make up out of my make-up drawer, and all the band-aids and cotton swaps out of the drawer below that. But they weren’t there.

So, then I looked in my Rubbermaid cabinet thingy that I have that April (my roommate) hates because it’s really just a symptom of how I don’t like to throw things away, because that broken fake pearl necklace might be just the thing we absolutely NEED when aliens attack us and the world ends.

I looked through all three draws though and I couldn’t find the pills, so then I decided to start pulling everything out. I pulled out seven boxes of cold medicine, some costume jewelry, five bottles of nail polish, an old diet cleanse I bought like three years ago and never use, an old ID badge from when I interned in the statehouse in grad school, seven more boxes of cold medicine and a nail file, but I still couldn’t find the stupid bottle of pills.

And I started crying a little silently, because holy crapola is my Aunt Flo meaner than cat on a cactus when she wants to be. So, then, out of desperation, I went through every single cabinet again. I littered the whole bathroom floor with cold medicines and cotton-related products, and I didn’t even care.

That’s when April woke up, all, “Crystal? What TIME is it?”

And I was all, “Umm. 3 a.m. I have really bad cramps, where’s that bottle of Tylenol we have?”

And she was all, “Oh that. I got rid of it.”

“What!!! Why??”

“Nobody was using it.”

“I WAS USING IT!”

“Oh. Sorry.”

And in that moment I wanted to kill April.

I did. I wanted to go in the bedroom and kill her in a way that’s too mean to write about here.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I took a breather deeper than the Pacific ocean, and I cried a little more and then I went to lay in my bed in the fetal position.

In the morning, she ended up finding me some stray Midol pills with a 2007 expiration date that I hadn’t seen in my hunt, and that helped a little bit. And she told me latter that there wasn’t any Advil in that bottle she threw away anyway, so even if she’d kept it, I wouldn’t have found what I needed.

And now, about 17 hours and a fresh bottle of Advil later, I’m pretty much over it. We’re friends again and I don’t really want to kill her now. But last night. Woh-ee, if she only knew how nice I was and how close she’d come to death, she’d probably totally stop giving me crap about my Rubermade cabinet thingy.

Just sayin.