one of those days...

Today has been one of those days where I wish I could have just slept through it.

On Saturday, I am going to Vegas. Before you get all excited and jealous of me, I am going with my mom on one of our annual mom/daughter trips. I suspect it’ll be the Vegas that I never do when I go with friends – shows, swimming pool, some light gambling and nothing to hip-happening. But it’s a vacation all the same… and I’ll take it.

Last night I was up and down all night feeling the oncomings of possible cold or maybe a sinus infection. This was unacceptable. Around 2am I finally decided that Nyquil was in order to cut the nonsense off at the pass and hopefully get to sleep.

Yeah, so taking Nyquil at 2am turned out to be a horrible idea. I mean sure… I fell asleep alright but it was the waking up part that was a bit sketchy. I would go so far as to say that I slept like a damn dream – sleeping deeply and satisfyingly. And by deeply I mean 2 things. First off, I slept with my arm over my head, what I am assuming to be all night. It was to the point that when I woke up this morning, I had the worst dead arm and was sure that due to lack of circulation, it would have to be amputated. Secondly, the apartment could have burned down around me and I wouldn’t have been the wiser. To further paint the picture – I slept through a minimum of 6 alarms.

Lesson of the day: Don’t take Nyquil after 10pm.

When I woke up, I felt like I was in college again; like I had binge drank the night before coupled with taking a slew of drugs that I forgot to ask what they were or what they’d do before I took them. (Oh those were the days.) And even though I woke up in my own bed, I hadn’t the foggiest of ideas of where I was or if I was even alone for that matter – which resulted in an unanswered ‘hello’ from me. It’s about that time that I realized that I was in my own apartment and alone. Whew… 2 down.

It was 9:40am and I had a team meeting at work at 10am. It so wasn’t in the cards for me to even attempt to make the meeting on time so I mustered up enough energy to log on to my work email and send out a note saying…

“Took Nyquil last night. Apparently I didn’t read the fine print on the directions. Manufactures Note: taking Nyquil after 10pm may result in successfully blocking out the entire world. Throwing on some clothes and heading that way – but it’s highly likely that I won’t make 10am exact for meeting.”

I pulled what little hair I have into a ponytail (which is not an attractive look for me), threw on what I am positive is the exact outfit I wore to work on Monday, tossed on some flops thinking I had heels in the car (which I didn’t) and headed out the door about 3 minutes and 45 seconds after I’d gathered my bearings on the world.

It’s not as if waking up late and missing a meeting was enough, but this ungodly rain just won’t stop. Somehow rain gives people permission to become more of an idiot then they already were on a normal day driving in normal morning traffic. Today was no exception. I am cruising along only to hit dead stopped traffic on the Tollway. That resulted in a second email…

“Yeah. Sitting in dead stopped traffic. Any hopes of me making the meeting, even a little late are off the table. Might as well not even bother waiting.”

As I am on my way to work, I hear my car making a familiar noise. The same one it made when the end result was me having a slight meltdown in the Honda Repair Shops waiting area full of other waiting customers.

Back in January, I had rear-ended a guy on the Tollway in rush hour traffic. Now while I am positively in love with my 2008 Honda Civic, anyone who’s had a Honda or has been in an accident with a Honda knows that they fold up like an accordion when even in a wreck going 5 miles an hour. I didn’t hit the guy all that hard, but the front of my car was jacked. His 1996 Toyota Carolla had a crack in the bumper and that was it. In my opinion, it was something that I wouldn’t even have fixed but this guy was taking things a little too seriously.

The accident happened next to one of the big tollbooths on the North Dallas Tollway and for some reason, cops had been posted up there pulling people over – for reasons I was never really sure of but won the not getting a ticket lottery and didn’t really care about their underlying reasoning for being there. But this guy that I hit was a total tool. He called out to the state trooper to come back and investigate the situation. Investigate the situation, I repeat. A cracked bumper – really?! Granted, I rear-ended the guy, it was my fault and I wasn’t putting up a fight. I was annoyed, but was out of my car with insurance in hand.

The trooper makes his way over to our cars and this guy goes ape-shit; and I am not even kidding you… over a crack that was barely noticeable on a 10+ year old car. Honestly, it coulda been there before I hit the guy… who knows. Anyhow, the guy tells me to stand by my car and that he’d talk to the trooper. Like he was effin in charge or something, but I wasn’t looking to go to jail (again) for an “accidental” assault on a cop or a random dude for that matter.

The trooper comes back to me and tells me that the guy was worried that my insurance wasn’t valid. What the hell?! He’s worried that my insurance isn’t good? Because I look like in my spare time I have a forgery State Farm Insurance Card set up in my apartment? So the trooper says he’s going to run my insurance and my plates to make sure everything is in order. It was on the only times that I told a cop and meant it – You won’t find anything. I’m not worried.

Everything checks out and I am legit, of course, but this dude just won’t let it go. He wants to file a report against me. I tell him, in front of the cop, that I am not going to contest the claim and that I will take full responsibility. It still wasn’t enough. He was insistent on making a claim. So I’m standing there talking to the cop to find out what him making a claim against me actually meant. And that’s when I learned something new about the law.

As it might be, if you rear-end a person, the cops are called and the person you hit wants to make a report – it’s standard protocol that not only the report is filed, but that I automatically get a ticket for tailgating… or what they call following too closely. I start running math in my head and get annoyed.

$250 deductible to fix my car.
$250 to pay a ticket for tailgating.
Car insurance going up $50+ a month for getting in an accident.

This had become a pain in the ass. The cop took one look at me and said something to the effect of – let me go talk to him and see what I can do. You’re not acting belligerent (another first), you’ve taken responsibility for this and so there’s no reason to make a report on it. Agreed. After 30 minutes of the two of them talking, the trooper comes back and tells me that he’s decided not to make a police report. No shit… what the eff for?

I make the claim on my car that night and the next day I take it to the Honda Body Shop for repairs. When I get it back a week-or-so later, it’s making this horrific noise. It was my speculation that when they repaired the front part of my car from the accident, they just didn’t do it right or something was rubbing against something else. But in my mind… it directly correlated to the rear-ending accident.

My car was making a high-pitched squealing noise. Like when you pull up to a light next a gelopi making that loud burst your eardrums pitch of my car sucks sound… yeah, that was me. But it wasn’t making the noise all the time and really it was only bad when I first started driving the car. After it heated up and I’d been driving for longer than 20 minutes, the noise disappeared.

Basically I ignored it until my car made the noise even when I was idling. Inevitably, every time I took it to Honda… it wouldn’t perform. Ran like a dream. Never made a peep. And I got the – wow, chicks shouldn’t have cars look from every Honda representative I encountered. I’d easily gone into Honda 5 times and all 5 times, they sent me away saying – bring it back when it’s making the noise. To which my response was – unless you plan on coming to diagnose this shit at my apt, it will never make the noise once I get it here because it’s warmed up by then. That came with an – I don’t do shit as a Honda Representative – shrug and they sent me on my way.

The 6th time, I was livid pissed by the time I got to Honda. I left work early, scheduled an appointment with them and got to Honda at 3pm. More than enough time for the car to cool and for them to find out what the hell was wrong with it. I sit and wait. And wait. And WAIT. The shop closes at 7pm and I am still sitting there with no car diagnosis at 6:30pm and not so much as a periodic update on what the situation is.

At 6:45pm this minimum wage reject with dreads running half way down his back comes in (to a still full waiting area) and tells me that they can hear nothing. My issue at that point, which I relayed in a calm manner, was this…

Me – Look, I have brought my car in to Honda like 6x and gotten no results. No answer. The noise has gotten progressively worse and all of you guys keep telling me that there is nothing wrong with my car and there blatantly is… I’m telling you there is. It has now officially gotten to the point that I am concerned and fear for my safety by driving this car out of here, yet again. Can you please see what you can do?

Him –Well you can leave the car here over night and we can check it out first thing tomorrow morning when it’s had more than enough time to cool off. Then we can diagnose it for you, hopefully. (PS – the hopefully comment at the end was in a condescending tone of – god, girls and cars… so stupid.)

It’s at this point, that my calm tone, lack of blood sugar and patience is wearing thin.

Me – Are you going to provide me with a car or am I supposed to sleep here?

Him – Did you bring another car?

Now… just that question alone should have gotten him punched directly in the face, but somehow I managed to pull myself together… kinda.

Me – *I flippantly and over-dramatically look around with my hands tossed out to my sides showing him I wasn’t hiding an imaginary 2nd car and driver anywhere in the vicinity and say (dripping with sarcasm)…* Yes. I drove 2 cars up here today. It was hard but I made it happen in case I ran into the expected incompetence that I run into every single time I come in here.

He stares at me for 30+ seconds really trying to make that statement fit into his world, until I break the silence.

Me – No, I don’t have another car. Are you kidding me?

Him – You can bring it back in 1st thing tomorrow and we can keep it until it makes the noise.

Me – And that fixes this problem, how? I have to take more time off work, to bring you my car to sit at Honda all day so that you can “hopefully” hear the noise? Dude, it’s the same problem we have now only it’ll be happening less then 12 hours from now. This is your solution?

Him – If we keep the car tonight and it diagnoses as something that is not covered under your warranty and we put you in a rent car, then you will have to pay for the rent car and $100 for the diagnosis.

He said something else after that… but I was in 100% belligerent mode at this point and thus my Honda meltdown ensued.

Me – *As loudly as possible so the other 10+ waiting people could hear what I was about to say, said… * So you mean to tell me that you are not going to do anything to help me? You mean to tell me that after I have brought my car into Honda 6+ times and the problem that you can’t locate which is getting progressively worse to the point where I fear my safety in this vehicle and you are going to let me walk out of here? That’s how you run a business? Is that what you are telling me?

Him – Uh, well… I don’t know what to tell you.

And then it happened… the lights dimmed and I prepared for the monologue portion…

Me – Well, you can walk your ass back to where you have cars just hanging around and lone me one until you figure out if it’s covered under my warranty or not. Just like you did the last time when you didn’t put my engine back together properly and it almost fell out of my car on the highway. Yeah, I coulda died. Or like the time that you guys forgot to put the oil cap back on after you’d changed it and damn near jacked up the car beyond use. Or how about the time that you…

I am at center stage. All eyes were on me. I have the complete and total attention of whoever was left in the waiting area and I am painting an awful image of the shoddy work they have done over-and-over again.

He cuts me off… to say he’s going to go see what he can do, turns on his heels and walks out. Good call, sir… good call. 7:45pm he returns and says they are going to give me a rental from Enterprise on them. Damn right they were.

Turns out that it was just the power steering and it was ultimately covered. But it was damn dramatic to actually make it happen. And I tell you all that to say, that this morning as I am running late, my brain still in a Nyquil fog, and am sitting in dead stopped traffic, I hear “the noise” and the thought of driving my car into a median was looking like a viable option.

I arrive to work at 11:15am and find a prime parking stop. I start to think that maybe things are going to turn around today, until I spotted him.

Dave. The 39-year old guy who works with the garage dater and asked me on a secret – behind my co-workers back – lunch (that we never went on thank god). You know it’s bad when I will do something in an attempt to avoid the garage dater and/or Dave for that matter. They, 100% of the time, provide a ridiculous blog as an end result of our encounters. But that’s exactly what I planned on doing – avoiding him.

I stand by my car where I can see him but he can’t see me and wait for him to finish smoking so he’d go back in and never even see me and furthermore we wouldn’t have to talk. He’s standing in front of the only entrance into the building, so it was just a waiting game that would last the length of a cigarette. Or so I thought. I wait, and wait and wait.

I started to get restless and had thoughts like – What the eff is he doing? Smoking a whole damn pack? Get done already. I’m so effin late and don’t want to deal with you. He’s moving towards the ashtray… he’s moving… he’s moving… mother effer… he’s lit another smoke. Damn it. This is one Mexican stand-off that I’m not gonna win. I lose. At life.

I decide that I will walk at a fast pace and mutter something like – I am so late as I rush by with an – oh, I didn’t see you – hi when he tries to stop me to talk. Didn’t work; mostly because as I walked fast, it caused me to become light headed. I was already a little light headed and woozy from my 2am bad decision.

Dear Nyquil,
You effin bastard. You’re officially on my shit list, right behind Honda and Subway.
-Angela

Aside: It seems that a majority of all bad decisions start around 2am. I was once arrested around 2am. I got held up at gunpoint in a questionable part of Louisiana around 2am. I ended up in the bed of a pickup truck headed to Nevada around 2am. Just to name a few… granted those all happened many, many years ago, but the theory holds true… nothing good happens after 2am.

He stops me to talk and I have no energy to fend him off and I really needed to sit down to let my head stop spinning. I tuned in and out until he made the statement…

Well, I have to go back to work. So lunch then… Tuesday next week, right?

I unconsciously say “right” and he scurries off.

Wait, what? Lunch? Was I even talking to him? I thought he was just droning on as I was waiting for my head to catch up with my body and for him to get done smoking 20 cigarettes. Apparently I was answering him. Or at the very least, I said I’d agreed to lunch on Tuesday. Which, I must have been on auto pilot with “yes” responses because I am not even back from Vegas on Tuesday at lunch time. Eh whatever.

I picked myself up and headed into the office. I went in through the back entrance to our office space to make 100% sure that I didn’t have to see anyone as I drag my sorry ass in about 3 hours late looking like I had a good time last night. When really, all I want to do is stare at the wall for 6 hours until this Nyquil crap expels itself from my very being.

It’s 1:20pm now… and I have been totally useless. Today has been one of those days where I wish I could have just slept through it.

... but instead, I'll just blog about it.