Currently Chasing: My old car

So I took my car to the shop two weeks ago for an A-2 inspection. I don’t know what an A-2 inspection is. All I know is “due for A-2 inspection” popped up on my screen. So I put it off for a couple of weeks and then finally made an appointment.

All of this stuff is bullshit to me really. I don’t like taking my car in. I don’t like hoping I don’t get ripped off. And I don’t like having to put gas in a rental car while I’m waiting for mine to get fucked up by some people doing an alphabet check that I probably don’t even need.

Mercedes does have a waiting room with free cookies, soda, coffee, hot cocoa; protein bars and chips…so maybe if I stand there and eat for 24 years it will equal the price of an oil change.

So $294 of work later I am handing over my credit card. When I see my agent on the way out…(yes, Mercedes assigns you a maintenance agent) he stopped me and told me I needed to make an appointment for a tire balance and transmission something or other. I said, ok, whatever…and he put me on the schedule. So I take my car in yesterday and get this transmission whatever thing and a tire balance. (Not like I felt like I needed a tire balance? Did I? Nothing was shaking? Could it be because I hit curbs so often? Which by the way they said they could sand down my rims and make them look good as new for $124. PER TIRE. And there is the rub.)

So I get a rental and drive away. Five or so hours later they are ready for me to pick up my car. And the cost of this transmission whatever and tire balance? $602! So in two weeks I have spent about $900 in maintenance fees.

When I was 20 I owned some type of boxy Mazda. It was a shiny khaki color, but it was god awful. I had been in a couple of accidents with it and the front right headlight was being held on by a wire hanger. I didn’t know what an oil change was back then, so I never got one. I would just keep putting new oil on top of old oil. I did this for three years. The car also had like, 157,000 miles on it. The most expensive thing in that car was the stereo, which I had put in, and which cost me $300. The tires on that car were always popping. Probably had something to do with the fact that I would get them replaced with used (mostly bald) tires. But what do you expect? I knew nothing about cars. I sold that car for $300. The price of my stereo.

All these years later I buy a top of the line luxury car and I’m paying a grand in a one month period for some sort of crazy bullshit. Not to mention the car only has a little over 30K miles on it!!! I asked how many times I was going to have to do this transmission thing, and the guy says…once.

Once? In my life? Once a year? Once a month? WTF does once mean? And also, if it is just once…who makes the call that it is right now? That just seems so random. Like, how many times do I have to make sure there isn’t a unicorn shitting in my filters? Once.

I’ve told the BF that I am never going to have another thing done on my car unless he’s there…cause I’m sick of getting screwed over and told I need all kinds of dumb shit, when most likely, I don’t. And as far as sanding my tires down…a few more curves, and I’ll have that all done on my own. FREE.

And I have plenty of wire hangers.

Currently Chasing: A Perky Pair (of grandparents)

My mother and father are step brother and sister.

Kind of.

I don’t think my grandparents actually officially walked down an aisle. It’s just common law marriage at this point. But they lived in the same house under the umbrella of happily ever after. My grandfather with his two boys and my grandmother will her four boys and four girls.

My dad was a hippie artist/musician and my mother was a trim belly/hula dancer. Together they were the perfect amount of irresponsibility.

They fell in love…got pregnant….got married….got over it…got divorced.

My grandparents are still together. My grandmother knows the definition of hard work and commitment. She has run her own business for decades. She was married to her first husband until his death, and has no intentions of bailing out on her second. She raised eight kids. She is still a very active participant in her own life and the lives of her children, and her children’s children and her children’s children’s children. And I’m sure we aren’t far away from children to the 4^th degree.

I’m taking my boyfriend home in August. He has met my father, and my father’s sister, (AKA my mother,) he has even met my brother and a random cousin. But I want him to meet my grandparents. I want him to meet my grandmother. I want her to know I’m happy.

I’ve been away from home since I was 17. I’m back for a week here and a week there….but I’m gone. And I’ll always be gone. My grandmother worries about me. Despite her eight kids, and their kids and their kids….she worries about me. I am the only grandchild both blood related to her and my grandfather. They can bond over me. They can both invest whole-heartedly in my successes.  And I want them to know I’m going to always be ok.

My grandparents are so normal.

Kind of.

My grandmother was married to a military man and while in Guam took Polynesian and Hawaiian dance classes. Then she taught her children all aspects of the art…this included fire knife dancing, belly dancing, Samoan dancing, New Zealand numbers as well as traditional hulas and Tahitians. Then she took this show (literally, Thealani’s Polynesian Dancers) on the road. They did luaus all over California, Arizona and Nevada.

Members of my family have danced for Bob Hope, Phyllis Diller, Ronald Regan, John Stamos, and the list goes on. I was a dancer from the ripe ol’ age of 19 months till I was 17 and headed off to the military. I wore a wig and very heavy make up so I could appear more “pacific island” like. It is a huge part of our family. A huge part of who my grandmother is.

Normal right?

My grandfather owned a massage parlor when he was younger. I heard it got shut down because of some happy ending nonsense. My grandfather knew nothing about it of course. And this could all just be gossip…but mostly life is.

He then had a very successful Barber shop. My grandfather has always had very good hair. He also learned how to apply permanent make up…and gave my grandmother permanent eye liner and lip liner. That’s love right? Letting your husband tattoo your eyes!!?

Now he runs a tractor business. Perfectly normal progression.

My grandparents have still not fallen off this wild ride. They are characters in every sense of the word. And not to disturb anyone, but my grandmother has the largest, perfectly perked natural breasts I’ve ever seen (in a polyester sweater of course!) She is the reason I still wear a bra to bed. It helps, she would tell me. I believe her.

(I also wear a bra to bed because in high school I “broke my boobs” and since then have been afraid to let them drift to far from each other.)

Normal.

So in August I’m going to spend a bit more time with my grandparents. Tell them how much I appreciate all of the ups and downs. All of the trial and error. All of the highs and lows. I am so much of who they are. And I’m so thankful they are still around to hear me say it.

Currently Chasing: The Glory of On Again

So I’ve rented my condo, a new contract has been signed and I’m currently working through all of the loan paperwork. WE ARE BUYING A TOWN HOME. It is a house I fell in love with when I first arrived to Maryland back in 2004. Back then it belonged to my good friend. When she decided to sell, I convinced another friend of mine to buy it. He put about $30k in upgrades into it … and three years later put it back on the market.  And now it’s off. And by the end of July, I’ll be living there.

And I won’t be alone.

My on, then off, then thank-god on, then fuck-you off, then I-guess-back on, then oh-hell-no off, then why-not on, then oh-yeah-that’s-why off, then I’m-still-alive-after-the-war on, then I-can’t-believe-you-still-won’t-marry-me off, is now, OH-MY-GOD-WE-ARE-BUYING-A-HOUSE-TOGETHER  on.

We’ve been through a shit storm over the past six years. And also one real storm where his car flooded and was never the same and he ended up trading it in for his current vehicle, while still reminiscing and even occasionally wishing he had parked his vehicle somewhere else, somewhere higher, because it would be paid off by now and he would have exactly this much money in his savings account right now.

We’ve both hurt each other. Mine is usually unintentional, like the time he told me not to touch his arm because it was very sore, and for some reason I grabbed onto it the first opportunity I had and basically sent him to his knees in pain.  Or the time he was talking to me about something … and I finally just looked and said, what makes you think I’m interested?  (We never say these sort of things to each other. He listens about Zumba and I listen about Golf, and he listens about blogging, and I listen about video games and we NEVER tell the truth about how we feel about these things, and that day I really fucked him up with a shot of it…and that is not the kind of honesty either of us needs right now.)

The pain he causes me is usually equally unintentional. Don’t get me wrong…I’m not walking around with bruises around my eye, saying I accidentally ran into a door knob, and following that up with…it wasn’t the door knobs fault, I deserved it. No, the bruises I have suffered have been mostly on the inside. But when I was at my lowest…he didn’t abandon me. (He did ignore me for a few days…which is his nature…and during that time I did feel abandoned by him…but like he always does, he came around. And he never blocked my number from his phone, which I’m pretty sure is an option he has.) And by my lowest point, I mean that a woman had publicly (online) accused me of sleeping with her husband (in real life) and I finally knew how Angelina Jolie felt…seeing her face all over every magazine calling her a home wrecker...with a beautiful Jennifer Anniston in a side bar looking totally betrayed, but with great highlights.

OMG right?  And that’s all I have to say about that.

So now we are going through our furniture and deciding what stays and what goes…and whose mattress we are going to use  (I think we may HAVE to get a sleep number bed because we will never agree.) My furniture will go in the living room…the basement will basically be an exact replica of his place right now and also he mentioned something about not being allowed down there unless you have a penis…which seemed weird, but I’m looking into it.

We are using his bedroom furniture because it is nice and I bought mine from a girl who sold me everything she owned for 2K right before moving to Kenya.

I’m excited. It’s a big step and I’m ready. It’s all moving so fast…but in the big scheme of things (SIX YEARS!!!) how fast is it really?

Yesterday we were talking on the phone about furniture and this and that and closing costs and home inspections and money. Always a touchy subject. He said … I’ll go ahead and schedule that and pay for it. I said, I’m worried about closing costs. He said, “don’t worry about it, I have money.”

I couldn’t help but wonder if he was thinking….”I’d have more if not for that damn storm in 2008.”

But he didn’t say it.

Instead he said, “and everything is going to work out and we are going to be happy there forever.”

And I said, “and be in love forever?”

And he said, “yes, you are going to be in love forever.” Then he chuckled and said. “Yes, in love forever.”

With not a hint of laughter in his voice.

And I didn’t even need to follow up the conversation with a text to reassure myself. Maybe this is what it feels like to finally believe.