Broke Down

Well, it is a darn good thing I had learned how to make those lattes at home. I officially can't afford anything. Why? You ask. I believe my car is officially broken down. Somewhere between the ten miles from my job, the oil change yesterday, and the ten miles back to my job, my car decided it had had enough. Here is the breakdown of my evening.

I walk out of my job, sit in my car. I dump out my leftover coffee on the black top. I check my text messages, and I turn my car on. It sounds alright, still recovering from the ticking lifters in the engine. It was desperate for an oil change. Big T had just returned it to my job after changing the oil and successfully driving it the ten miles back to town. He, of course, had no problems with it.

I put my car in reverse, and all is well. I took my foot off the brake, and my car didn't move at all. Normally, it would start to scoot a little on its own before I pressed the gas. It didn't, so I pressed the gas and it scooted just the littlest bit. However, it made this awful, terrible scraping noise. My first reaction was that it was caught on the cement block in front of it, like when you drive into a parking spot and get too close to the cement stopper. Well, it wasn't that. It proceeded to loudly scream at me, with that awful grinding scraping noise, so I quickly put my foot back on the brake and shoved it into park. After my heart slowed a little, I tried reverse again, and this time, the grinding, scraping was immediate.

I called Big T to come check it out, and he honestly asked me if I could just drive it home!! Explain to me what happens in a man's head when you tell them you cannot even move the car and they want to know if you can at least drive it home so, God forbid, they wouldn't have to get out of the house and away from the stupid video game and his buddy to help his soon to be WIFE!! So, you can guarantee he got to be on the $h*t list for the rest of the night. Plus, I had to blame someone for my bad luck, so he got that, too.

We figured out that we could put the car in neutral and push it backwards. It would also go into drive with no grinding issues. So, I slowly drove out of the parking lot of my job and onto the road. I eased up to about 20 miles an hour, and it starts to rapidly tick, as if the oil had never been changed. Then, it makes another loud, awful, indescribable noise and yet another in succession, and I swear I heard all the fluids drain out of my car. It was just a sloshing liquid sound and some more grinding. From there, I proceeded to throw my hands up in the air, put the car in park, turn on my hazard lights, all in the middle of the road. Of course, people proceed to drive around me as if I had completely inconvenienced their day. For crying out loud! I am so sorry to have ruined your day by requiring you to pay an iota of attention to the the damned road and drive your a$$ around me!

From there, we pushed the car into a nearby parking lot, about forty feet from my job and leave it there. I went home, changed my clothes, and had about 10 minutes before I was supposed to be heading off to my Girl's Night Out.

By the time I arrive to my GNO, I just start bawling and explaining that my car is done. I was ridiculously emotional about it, but let me explain why.

1) This is my very first car that I paid for all by myself while I was still in high school.

2) This car belonged to my mom before it belonged to me. Now that she is gone, I had this disillusion that my car would last forever.

3) I am trying, as you all may have read, to plan a freaking low budget wedding.

4) I have been trying my hardest to plan a dream honeymoon for us, also on a freaking low budget.

We have half of the money we need saved for the wedding. We are taking a loan out to pay for the honeymoon, and we have one vehicle, a 1989 Ford truck, now between the two of us. We are already trying to find ways to scrimp and cut things out so we can save more money for our wedding and honeymoon, so there is no way we can afford another car until maybe, MAYBE, January of next year. That means that Big T and I have to share that run down truck until next year!

I know I am being awfully pessimistic, but besides the fact that that is how I am, I had this feeling of doom for the past two weeks that my car was going to crap out right now, just when we absolutely could not handle another expense. Somehow, my intuition was screaming at me that this would happen. I called my mechanic this morning. I explained all of the noises and actions of my car to him, and he said it sounds like a problem with the transmission. I told him I agreed, and I let him know that if my transmission is shot, I will be junking the car. It is a 1994 Oldsmobile Cutlass Sierra, and it has 165,000 miles on it. I am lucky it lasted this long. However, it is obviously not worth the amount of money it would take to fix the transmission. My alternator has been on the brink of going out for the past two years as well, so I do believe it is just time to say goodbye, though I am not at all ready for that.

Last night, all I wanted was to call my mom and tell her how upset and frustrated I was. I wanted nothing more than to hear her give me crap about how old the car is and how I had to have done something to it to make it crap out. Ignore the fact that it is old. She would have said everything I didn't want to hear and completely grated on my nerves, and yet I wanted that, only that. I ended up sobbing myself to sleep last night, feeling the utter despair, once again, at the fact that my mom would never be here for me to call again, never be here to grate at my nerves and never be able to tell me, "I told you so." She can't be here to tell me how ridiculous it is that I am trying to get married so young or tell me to suck my belly in when I am trying on wedding dresses. She can't criticize my plans and make me crazy, and she can't come to my bachelorette party and have everyone rolling on the floor in hysterics.

I know, and I have heard it a million times. I am not trying to be mean, but please don't leave me a comment explaining to me that my mom is here in spirit. I don't want to hear it right now. Her spirit can not do all those things she did when she was alive. Most of all, her spirit can not scoop me up in the best hug ever, and her spirit can not give me her shoulder to cry on. So, please, spare me the bit about her being in a better place and the business about her always being in my heart. Right now, it is just not good enough.