Accidental Southern Belle

So True

From PostSecret:

I totally agree.

I'm Kind of Dumb

I'm driving home from a lovely birthday dinner last night and I realize that my CHECK ENGINE light is on. So, of course, I go into total panic mode. I call Matt and Joel and totally lose my mind. It is especially bad because I am supposed to embark on a 3,000 mile road trip TODAY. So, I wake up in a cold sweat at 6:30AM (this is also possibly because of the enormous amount of sugar I ingested last night--delicious sundaes, appletini's and chocolatetini's) and I go to the dealership and they check my car and it turns out: I hadn't closed the gas cap tighly enough and the car thought there were vapors being emitted or something. So, now I feel sort of foolish, but my check engine light is off.

I guess that's what happens to people who are going to hell.

My Car Strikes Again

If it was possible for one person to have to spend more money on their brand new car, I'd like to meet them.

I was trying to be a responsible person today and get the registration renewed on my car (which I'm sure will cost me $100) and it turns out that the fact that the car dealership mis-typed my address so many months ago has bitten me in the butt. Apparently (I had no idea about this), you have to pay TAXES on your car. And apparently, they sent me a bill in October to this effect, but since it said 4107 and not 4104 on the bill, it never got to me. Don't ask me why. Maybe they would look into the fact that it had been returned to them? But no, they didn't. They just let the interest accrue over ten months or whatever and then when I try to renew my registration, they tell me it is blocked because I haven't paid my taxes. But WHAT TAXES ARE THESE? I wonder. Indeed. They are $144 in taxes. This is all they tell me.

So, between the hideous $200 bill for the 15,000 mile service that I didn't need (including a tire alignment that wasn't even DONE WELL), the $436 bill for insurance and now the $144 in taxes, plus however much it is going to cost me to renew the registration and get the thing inspected, I will have spent almost a thousand dollars on my car this month. AND NOTHING IS WRONG WITH IT.

For some reason, this is totally irritating to me. I don't mind paying my tuition, I don't mind paying my bills, but all this money being thrown at a vehicle that I wish didn't even exist just drives me totally nuts. Plus, the fact that I have to go and sit in the dealership AGAIN tomorrow to get the horn replaced since there WASN'T one when I got the car. Who makes a car without a horn? Hello, Korea, get your act together.

Ugh. I love living here, but for goodness sakes, if for one day I didn't have to get in my car, I would be a happy woman.

I'm also in a coffee shop where I'm the only person and there is a bizarre man playing an electric harp. So much for peace and quiet. I'd go home, but I have to get back in my car, and I'm boycotting it right now.

A Return to Grumpiness. Or, Why I Hate My Car

Ok. I love the south. I love my new life. I love that it is 3:57 PM on a Thursday and I am in a coffee shop with an open book and the second draft of my novel. But I do not love my car. I will do anything, in fact, to avoid it. And then things happen like the fact that I have to spend over two hundred dollars on getting it serviced when NOTHING IS WRONG. Oh, the wheels have to be aligned. Whatever. I don't care if the wheels are aligned. I certainly don't want to pay $79 for it. I certainly hope the OTHER $79 they charged me to change my wiper blades was worth it. I honestly am super annoyed. I was doing the right thing, bringing it in for service and then I get kicked in the teeth with a giant bill. AND they couldn't even fix the fact that my horn doesn't work because they sent the part back. Ok, just because I didn't come in in April to get it fixed when they called (I was BUSY then) doesn't mean that I'm not GOING to get it fixed. You'd think they could hold on to it for me for a few months. But no. So now they have to order it AGAIN and I'll have to go back next week. If they charge me ANOTHER $79 to install it, I'm going to start crying in the service office.

I think I'm most annoyed about this because I was doing SO GOOD with money this month. Not eating out. Not shopping. Now I am out $200 and have aligned wheels. They look exactly the same to me.

This is reminding me slightly of the THREE YEARS I spent with braces to fix the way that my back teeth aligned. My teeth looked fine. And yet, I spent ages thirteen to sixteen with braces. In retrospect, I was hideous anyway so a little bit of metal in my mouth probably wasn't making a big dent in the spectrum, and yes, I am glad that I had them now. But I certainly wasn't happy at the time. And that's how I feel about my overpriced wheel alignment.

They Let Me Drive Slow on the Driveway

I spent the weekend in Blacksburg and actually got a good bit of writing done there. I revised one of the stories I wrote last semester about the haiku-writing receptionist to read on the 27th and kept going on the story about the one-hit-wonder. Matt had a fabulous idea for how it should end which totally got me going on the thing again, so I should have a draft of that by the end of this week. Good thing because I am going to have to turn something in in my workshop soon. It meets for the first time today. I'm really looking forward to it. My teacher is sweet and kind of flaky and my advisor described her as a kind of Delphic oracle of writing. This is exactly what I want in a teacher right now.

The drive to Blacksburg was, however, quite harrowing. The first part, from here to Raleigh was easy, good weather, good music, no traffic. Then, there was all of this insane traffic between Raleigh and Winston-Salem. Some of it was caused by the fact that they decided to re-draw the lines on the highway on the Friday before a holiday weekend. Totally insane. Then, in Winston-Salem, it started raining SO HARD which slowed things down and then by the time I was in the mountains (I think it's called Fancy Gap, which I think should totally be like the eveningwear line of The Gap) in Virginia, it was solid fog. Literally the only thing I could see going up the mountain was the taillights of the car in front of me and if he got too far ahead of me, I couldn't even see that. It's super scary because you just don't know how far you've gone, who's behind you, who's in front of the guy in front of you.  The funny thing about this was, though, that I kind of feel like that all the time when I am driving because it just feels so precarious to me. So I can imagine how scary a situation like that might be for someone who actually feels comfortable driving to suddenly be in this all-enveloping fog. In some ways, it's kind of a regular occurence to me. Regardless, I felt like the person who was in front of me and I were kind of in it together on the treacherous journey up the mountain and I totally felt sad when our little duo was broken up at the top of the moutain where the fog broke.

Matt and I had a great weekend, as always. We ate well, watched a bunch of movies (Wet Hot American Summer which is a hilarious movie about a Jewish camp in 1981, totally brought back memories of Cejwin although Cejwin was WAY less fun and the counselors were way less attractive, Chumscrubber which is a sort of predictable but interesting movie about over-medicated kids in the suburbs and Broken Flowers which I mostly slept through not becuase it wasn't good but because I was exhausted. I loved the part that I saw though and I think I will have to rent it and watch the parts that I missed--random thought though, why does Bill Murray wear a track suit in every movie that he is in?), part of a football game, went walking around this lovely pond in the mountains near where he goes bike riding.

I have to give a presentation to the undergraduates today about why I write fiction and I just have no idea. So I have to go and think something up.

Back in the Go-Cart Again

It was an eventful day as I was able to retrieve my car from Parker's Collision Centre and it is as good as new. Except now instead of smelling like new car (or bar, as it sometimes does), it smells like paint. I'm hoping that goes away soon. But yes, the Mitsubishi Lancer has been returned, which is good because IT kind of smelled like fake strawberries and that was making me want to throw up in my mouth just a little bit.

At first it was not quite as good as new as they had forgotten to put the sporty stripe back on the side and I was trying to remember if it had had a stripe on the side to begin with and I figured that it COULDN'T have only had a stripe on one side (although that would have been kind of cool).

The guy at the car place looks kind of like Santa Claus, white beard and all (did you hear the thing on NPR yesterday about the woman who grooms Santa Clauses?) anyway, he's really nice, but he is just dumb as a post. Cannot remember a damn thing. Like not even VAGUELY. I guess maybe that's part of his job, like it helps to work at a Collision Centre if you can't remember what the heck you tell people from one minute to the next.

Anyway, they put the stripe on and now it looks fab. I did miss driving it. Although I do think that there is something funky going on with the windshield wipers that I need to check on. Funny how driving a different car makes you realize what probably needs to be fixed on your own. Like my windshield wipers make this horrible noise when they're running and I just figured it was because there wasn't enough water for them to wipe. But I think it's something else. Because there were like two drops on the windshield yesterday and the Lancer wasn't making that horrible noise. So, it's back to the dealer for me. W-hoo!

At this time next week, I'll be in New York. I'll also probably be drunk as we're having our annual holiday lunch next Friday which starts at noon and lasts all day and is just the booziest lunch and afternoon you can possibly think of.

In other news, I got a pretty fabulous work-related holiday present today. A cooler filled with gourmet ice cream. Isn't that awesome? I am excited to eat it. It has fabulous flavors like egg nog and peppermint which seem delicious. I am thinking of having an ice cream social at my apartment, actually, because there's no way that little ole me can (or should) consume six pints of gourmet ice cream. Mmmm! Party on!

Since the Last Installment of the Accidental Southern Belle...

Lots has has happened.

1. I finished the semester. I handed in my 10 page paper. Finished revising and answering the editors' queries on the chapter I had to hand in for my Editing Class. Figured out my grades on a fabulous Excel spreadsheet created by Matt who is an Excel genius. I am done. My workshop teacher has to fill out a form that asks "Based on this student's performance in your class, do you have any concerns about her/his successful completion of the MFA program?" and he circled NO. So I am set, at least for now. There is the matter of my editing class tomorrow in which I've been requested to allot 1 1/2 to 2 hours and dress "casually and warmly" for a "surprise" which will be...interesting...but anyway, back to the weekend.

2. I got my hair blown out at the mall by someone named Marsha.

3. I found out that getting your hair blown out is not a term that is used in the South.

4. I drove to Blacksburg, Virginia and back in my longest solo drive ever--six hours there and five and half hours back (why it only takes Matt 5 hours to do the same drive, I don't really know). It was an awesome weekend. I went to Matt's Via Fellowship banquet where he was the total rockstar of the night. Then I met all the other geotechs who are fun and cool. Matt and I had a hilarious weekend which included watching Charlie and the Chocolate factory while eating wine and cheese and water crackers and going to the delicious Cabo Fish Taco. We also went to a redneck bowling alley and stared with awe at the photos of people who have bowled 300's. AND, I also saw the beautiful Virginia Tech campus. But basically it was just nice to hang with Matt and see his life.

5. I brought my dented car to the body shop and got an AWESOME Mitsubishi Lancer as a rental car. I know you are jealous. According to the Mitsubishi website "the Lancer is ready to roll just like you are." This is VERY true in my experience. Honestly, I'm just happy it has a CD player. I do miss the go cart though. I hope that they do a good job fixing it.

For the next week and a half, I am going to work and write and read. I am so looking forward to it. Matt gave me a Senseo coffee maker for my birthday and it is sooooo delicious. He also gave me this My Pod thing, which my mom also needs because we think it is better than the Eco Pod, which she has. So, I am going to stay home and drink fabulous coffee and the novel will start cooking again. Especially since when I ventured out today to mail packages in my never-ending love affair with UPS, I had a serious freak out when I thought I had lost my wallet. This was just AFTER the serious novel freak out (sorry, Gil). Ahh, creativity, it is a fickle and sometimes depressing thing.

Insurance Agents Be Damned

So, it seems that the way to get an insurance agent on the phone is to cry. After I called the office literally ten times yesterday, I finally just started whimpering to the receptionist, "What do I have to do to actually SPEAK with Connie instead of getting her voicemail?" I said.

"Oh," she said. "I don't know. She hasn't been picking up?"

(In my head, I say, "No bitch, you've been putting me straight into her voicemail, it's not even RINGING in her office.") "No. She hasn't. And I really need to speak with her. Today. I've had an accident." That's when the real tears start to come.

This makes her feel bad. So, she puts me on hold to "run down to the other end of the building" to get Connie. Then, MIRACULOUSLY, Connie calls me on the other line.

By 6PM, I had the number of the adjuster.

Of course, now I need to get the CAR DEALERSHIP to call me back so I can find out where to go to get an estimate on the damage. Whatever. I need an assistant. Who can deal with this crap. And also who can clean my apartment, which I did for like two hours last night, in some ways it was relaxing, but really, would prefer someone else to do it. Anyone up for it? You can sleep in the laundry room next to the boiler. In New York, that room would go for like $650 a month.  And you can have it here for FREE, as long as you take care of all this bureaucratic shit, and also, maybe could grade some poems this weekend? I have a shitload!

In case you were worried, I am madly in love with my new kitchen-ish table. I should have gotten one sooner. I am sitting at it right now, looking out the window, drinking coffee, listening to Miles Davis. This is the life.

When You Hear a Crunching Sound, You Know Things Are Not Going to Be Good

So, I'm having a great day. My class went really well. I'm done teaching them poetry, but I think I've actually taught them something because 1) they wrote good poems 2) they started repeating my own words back to me (I almost applauded when one of them said "I think that the rhymes in this poem are restricting its meaning"). I am going to go home and make myself dinner, a real dinner with protein and vegetables. And I am backed out of my parking space, about to turn the wheel to go forward and I see it: this girl who is totally about to back into me. And she so doesn't see me and even when she hits me, SHE KEEPS GOING. And then I hear it: the crunching sound.

And now this is what my car looks like:

And here's a closeup:

Sigh. I just got the stuff with my eye taken care of and now I have a new bureaucratic mess. Plus, I'm now officially the person driving around in the dented car.