Suzy Says

I was once again rewarded with a midnight power outage for staying up late on my birthday. Again, it was a Wednesday night, but fortunately, this one only lasted a few hours, rather than the fourteen hours the other one did. Exchanging texts with Megan in the dark and silent depths of the night, I learned that no accidents had been reported, so maybe it was a wayward tree versus a power line.

These out of season, mid-week, midnight power outages are getting a little strange.

I spent my birthday eve proving that I may be older, but I’m not wiser. I left home early, planning to drop Wednesday off at what is rapidly becoming her daycare, or possibly private school, in time to get to the jobette. I went to the gas station ($50!) and then Safeway, where I chose a mid-price bottle of sparkling wine and a Vogue magazine about the Met Gala.

At the check out, I discovered that I had left my wallet in the car. I left my embarrassing at 8 am purchases with the clerk and went back to the car, where I noticed that I had left the gas cap off. Fortunately, it’s attached by a plastic thingie, like mittens with strings for cars (or Suzies, as the case may be). I closed the gas cap and went back to the store, where I told the clerk what happened. She laughed and said that at least I’d gotten all the mistakes out of the way early in the day, so I was good to go!

I laughed my way to the car and drove the short distance to the car place, which is a used car lot, garage, and the only rental car place in town all rolled into one. As I rolled down the window, opened the door from the outside, propping it open with my knee while I rolled the window up again (this has become my signature move over the past couple of months), I was approached by one of the car salesmen.

It turned out that he was a Ford salesman in Santa Rosa for many years, and, like me, has only ever owned Fords. He told me that Wednesday was in fact the Car of the Year in the year she was born (2008), so he was kind of surprised by the issues I was already having after such a short time in our relationship. Maybe I really am cursed. He further suggested that I might want to consider trading Wednesday in for a less temperamental model and gave me his card.

At the end of the day, I picked Wednesday up* after they had repaired the door so I could now open it from the inside as well as the outside. I went home without any nagging on Wednesday’s part, though a couple of days later, I noticed that the windshield fluid refused to squirt, so – stop me if you’ve heard this before – I’m going to drop her off and get what I hope is the final detail taken care of on my way to the jobette tomorrow. I have to wonder why there wasn’t an error message to alert me to this problem – Wednesday never fails to tell me that the door is ajar when doing my signature move, or that the trunk is open when I just popped it and am safely parked, but cars are designed by men, after all.

Here’s hoping that Wednesday and I both stay out of the shop for the rest of the year.

*On the bright side, they washed and vacuumed her and she looks fabulous.