My Car

The story of my car starts 10 years ago when my mother and I were driving home from my sister's flute recital in our Subaru Outback. It was red and less than a year old. I loved it. We were on Clover Street, heading straight through the Clover/French Rd. intersection. There was a van coming towards us, but instead of going straight, it turned left. Everything went in slow motion. I heard my Mom scream, and I said, very matter-of-fact-ly "We're going to get in a car accident".

The van smashed into the front/passenger side of the car. The airbags hit me. The air was dusty and my Mom was yelling at me to get out. My door was stuck and I had to kick it open with both feet. The first thing I noticed was green liquid floating all over the street. Car pieces were all over. I burst into tears and couldn't stop crying. The car was destroyed and I knew it. 

The car was totaled, and my parents purchased a new model of the same car - this time in a color called "wintergreen". I was sad it wasn't red. 

When it was time to go to go to college, a few years later, my Dad made a deal with me. He told me if I picked a school that gave me a full scholarship I would get a car. We had fun pretending he was going to buy me a WRX, with 264 horsepower. There was no car, though, for my first year of college. For my second year of college, he bought a 10 year old Saturn for a couple thousand dollars from my cousin (who had probably used it for off-roading). 

Ah, the shitty saturn, as I called it. The driver side window did not go down. It stalled daily. One of the wheels got dented, and I ended up having to drive out to a creepy junkyard for another, unmatching one (there's a story for my next post). After a year with the shitty saturn an amazing thing happened. My Dad bought a new car - and passed the wintergreen Subaru outback on to me. He gave me a short lecture about taking good care of it and keeping it clean, as it was the family car. I sure loved driving a car that didn't stall every time I was at a red light. 

I drove the car for the rest of my time at college.  Aside from a flat tire I got last year (someone in Steve's neighborhood slashed it, and left cocaine in the tire - we know because we tried it. (That's a lie, people!)) the car ran perfectly. 

My good luck ran out on December 8th, when the check engine light went out. My Dad suggested getting in to be check would be good, and if the light started flashing, to stop driving immediately. Steve advised me to jump out of the car if it started on fire. Three days, one awesome rental car, one catalytic converter, and almost two paychecks later, my car was fixed. 

I was a bit of a snot about the whole situation, and had a bad attitude. So, I suppose it's no surprise that 18 days later my car had another problem. A week ago Monday, when I was heading off to work, my car wouldn't start. It was totally dead. On the plus side, I got to drive my father's awesome Prius for the morning. On the more negative side, there was another problem with my car.

At lunch my father and I went to Sears to purchase a new battery.  He was sure it was the battery - the car is 9 years old at this point, and batteries have a 8-10 year life, so it made sense. So we bought the battery, came home, put the battery in, and the car still didn't start.

I started sobbing.

My father called the tow truck and I hid in my room and tried to get work done from my home computer. Tried being the key word in that sentence - I was a complete and total wreck. I'd just had the catalytic converter replaced a couple weeks ago, bought a new battery, now it needed to be towed, have something else fixed. It just didn't seem appropriate to me that I would spend more money than I was making on my car. 

I prayed. I asked other people to pray. I heard the tow truck pull up. I couldn't bear to watch. I heard the tow truck leave. My father came upstairs and said "It started. The tow truck guy - he was this little jolly guy - he put the key in and it started. It must have been flooded. I didn't think that could happen to newer cars, but he said it is possible. So it's fine now". 

I drove the car that night, to Starbucks, around Henrietta angrily. I drove to work the next day, and to CVS for milk. It was starting. It wasn't starting that well, but it was starting, and getting me where I needed to go.

At 9:00pm on New Years Eve I got in my car to go out, and it was completely dead again. I stomped in the house and layed on my bed and played Tap Tap Revenge for half an hour. Then I called many people in my cell phone, in total boredom. My father and I decided we'd get it started the next day and get it somewhere to be looked at right away.

Well, we got a little bit distracted on New Years Day, and ended up watching a program about an obesity clinic in NYC for about 4 hours. Then I played DDR with Alex for a few hours.

So Friday morning I woke up and my father was in the driveway with the hood of my car up, battery out, soaking all sorts of car pieces in water and baking soda. He couldn't get it started. I got upset again. I prayed. I complained. My Dad still wanted to get it started himself, but said he'd killed the battery trying so many times, so we were going to take it to Sears to get charged. 

Into Sears we go, for the second time that week, carrying a battery. We handed it to the woman at the counter, and she took it to the back. She came out two minutes later. "It's bad" she said, and handed us a brand new battery. "It's very rare, but it happens". Back at home, for about the 5th time, my Dad hooked a battery up to my car. This time, it started up perfectly right away. 

The moral of the story is . . . well, I don't know. Maybe there isn't one. Maybe this is just a story about my car and I. 

Why Is Paying Bills So Difficult?

I thought it was common knowledge - People are more likely to pay you if you make it easier for them. 

Examples of what not to do:

1) NYSDMV

I know some of you are sick of hearing about this, and some of you can't believe I paid them, but it's still a good example. I got a ticket at 1:00am on a Thursday. October 23, 2008, to be exact. I was ticked off, so I decided to pay the ticket off right away and get it out of my mind. First thing that morning I signed onto the website, entered in my ticket info, only to find that it was not listed yet. Ok, this made sense, as it had not even been 8 hours since I'd received the ticket, and most of the hours had been in the middle of the night. You have 14 days to pay a ticket, and by the 10th day, my ticket was still not available online. There was no phone number to call. Being the conscientious person I am, I wrote a check and put it in the mail, along with a letter saying that it was unacceptable to offer an online payment option, and then have it not work. My guess is that people without OCD and photographic memories might have forgotten and not paid the ticket at all, and then got slammed with a late fee.

2) Frontier Communications 

I realize many of you are also tired of my whining about Frontier, but this is another good example. I had a phone/DSL bill to pay, and was using a credit card to pay. I called, went through 5 billion (or, three) automated menus, and arrived at the automated credit card payment system. The first direction: Enter your account number as it appears on the top of you bill. Ok, this is easy - but as I'm entering the number I have the feeling this is just not going to work (yeah, yeah, I knooooow). It doesn't work. The nice computer voice lady tells me she doesn't recognize my number. I try it again. She still doesn't recognize it. I try it a third time and she still doesn't recognize it and hangs up on me. I call Frontier, but this time navigate through the automated menus to find Customer Service, and ask the lady why the heck my account number is unrecognizable. This lady, who is a human, tries to sell me extra services, and then tells me she is connecting me to the appropriate extension so I can pay. Well, what do you know, same friendly computer lady asks me to enter my account number. And, what do you know, she doesn't recognize it again. So I hang up on the computer lady, call a third time, get to a human for the second time, and tell her I am trying to pay the bill but it is just not working. She connects me to another human, who takes the credit card info, and I pay the bill.

The business I work for used to have a terrible payment system. The only option was to pay monthly, by check. This did not work. In the 11 months that I used this system, we racked up about $2,000 in unpaid invoices. When I had the opportunity to change things I did - options! I offered three methods to pay your bill, two payment schedules, the option for automated payments, and an incentive if you pay your entire bill up front. I've been using this system for four months and currently have $41 of unpaid invoices. 

I know the convention is to slam people with late payments to get them to pay their bills on time, but I think the key to getting a payment is to simply have actually making the payment possible.

My Friends

So, I honestly have no idea why I started a blog. It occurred to me that if I intend to keep this up I am bound to mention my friends sooner or later. I started to wonder if there was an order to this - like when I got a new job - I had to tell my family first, then my close friends, etc. I thought about which friends I was likely to mention, and wondered if some of them would prefer to not have their name, even if it was just their first name, floating around the internet. This made me recall a time that I was preparing a poem I wrote to be published on a collaborative blog. When I decided I did not want to use real names and places in the poem the editor and I had fun coming up with fake ones. The poem was never published, but since it is all ready, with fake names and all, I thought I would put it to use. 

My dog is shaking.

We got him when I was nine years old.

He was a puppy.

We played soccer in the backyard.

Every morning I took him outside when I woke up.

It was my responsibility.

His name is Butterscotch,

And he always liked food.

He would eat everything

- He once ate steel wool he found in the basement -

And then he stopped eating.

He couldn't jump up onto the sofa.

And then he couldn't walk.

So my Dad carried him out to the backyard,

While I woke up and went to my real-world job.

He couldn't go to the bathroom.

He can hardly stand.

He started shaking and won't stop.

And so today my Mom said

"I want to take him tomorrow, to the vet, to get the shot"

And a few tears came out.

He was on the sofa next to her, wrapped in a towel, still shaking.

I said no.

Not tomorrow.

"Why"

"John won't be here. He needs to come over.

He's supposed to come over.

He said he'd come over.

He has to go to Scranton all day.

I won't even be able to call".

And he was shaking in the towel.

My Mom didn't say anything.

"What if he dies tomorrow just on his own"?

She looked at Butterscotch, petted his head.

"When you are born, you cry" she said.

"When you die, other people cry. You don't.

He's going back to be with his friends, puppies".

And my friend was sitting across the room

Sketching my dying dog

So I did not cry.

I did not say anything more.

I wanted to say "Will he make it until Jane comes home"

I wanted to say "What will we do with his collar"

I wanted to say "What will I do when Dad cries"

I waned to say "What if I don't get to say goodbye"

I wanted to say "I am so scared to say goodbye"

I am so scared to say goodbye.

I am so scared to say goodbye.

 

Why I am NOT allergic to cats

A lot of people call me "GF", but it is not because I am their girlfriend, it's because I am gluten free (A lot of people also call me "OCD", but that is because I truly have OCD). 

Sometimes I tell people I am allergic to everything, because it takes a lot less time to say that, than "I have celiac disease, so I can't eat gluten. It's a protein in wheat, barley, rye (and oats, by contamination). Instead of digesting gluten, it triggers an immune system response and my small intestine attacks itself and I can't absorb any nutrients from the food I eat. It takes about the size of a third of a grain of rice of gluten to make me sick, so not only can I not eat anything with wheat, barley, rye or oats, but I can't eat anything that may have touched any of those grains. I can't use a wooden cutting board or spoon, because the wood may have absorbed some of the gluten and it would get on my food. I can't use a strainer that is used for pasta made with wheat. I can't use a sponge, because those get covered with gluten, too, so all dishes that have been touched with a sponge have to be washed in the dishwasher or with a fresh paper towel and soap. My reaction to gluten lasts about two weeks. A few times I got so dehydrated I went to the hospital, but it won't kill me. I could get cancer in my small intestine from so much damage, and that would kill me, but it wouldn't directly be celiac killing me"

It's much simpler to say that I am allergic to everything.

Oh, I'm allergic to eggs, too. But this is a more normal allergy. 

I am NOT allergic to cats. Actually, I'm fairly certain that I am allergic to cats, but today I'd rather prove why I am not allergic to them. 

I don't do well with antibiotics that end in -cillin, but I don't think that's a real allergy. 

Cats. 

Several weeks ago I got a cat's claw stuck in my left hand. I love animals - all of them - even the bugs that were having sex on my car this one time - so I see an animal and I go over to it. This particular cat was quite friendly. I was sitting on a sofa petting its stomach, and it was rolling around on its back. The cat was having fun playing, and batted at my hand with it's paw. The cat obviously hadn't had it's nails clipped. Claw went into my hand. It was long, and curving under due to it's length, so when I lifted my hand up, the cat came up with me. The cat removed it's claw from my hand and got up. I looked at my hand. It was red, and already a bit puffy. I felt a shooting pain go up my hand into my finger. I sanitized my hand. I iced my hand. I drove home using only one hand (my right hand, of course). I drove to and from church the next day with only my right hand. I iced my hand some more. I planned to call the doctor first thing on Monday morning, but I woke up and my hand was fine. (Sorry if that was a horrible ending - but it really happened that way)

In November I started coughing. By time it was Thanksgiving I was coughing quite a bit, so the day after Thanksgiving I decided to clean every inch of my bedroom. While vacuuming the dusty boxes under my bed I discovered some things under my bed that I hadn't planned on finding there - more cat hair than I thought my cat had on his body at any point in time AND moldy cat poop. Thank you, Robin Hood (thats my cat's name). "Aha", I thought, "That explains why I have been coughing. The cat stuck it's claw in me and that hurt. The cat hair/poop under my bed made me cough. I'm allergic to cats." I tested my theory by literally rubbing my face in my cat's fur. I had to wash my face right away, and coughed continually for about five minutes.

Yet I went to work on Monday - and I don't keep a cat at work - and the coughing just got worse, to the point where I couldn't speak, because I couldn't get air into my lungs. Ok, so I don't really know if air wasn't going into my lungs, but it felt like that. Despite my fear of being prescribed a -cillin medication, I called the doctor and scheduled an appointment. 

"It's one of two things" she told me, and proceeded to list off three options.

Option 1 - A virus, that will go away in another week or two.

Option 2 - Asthma. 

Option 3 - Heartburn.

I don't see cat allergy on that list! Ha!

My instructions were to wait a week or so and see if I feel better. If I do, it's a virus! If I don't feel better I should fill a prescription she gave me for an inhaler. If that works, I call and let her know and I get lots of refills for the inhaler - refills for life. If that fails, as well, I get to start taking an over-the-counter heartburn medicine - any one of my choosing. At this point, we really hope that works. If it doesn't work, well, who knows. 

So, you see, while I may be "allergic to everything", I am clearly not allergic to cats. This means cats obviously are a figment of my imagination, or they would be included in the category "everything".  And you can't be allergic to something imaginary, anyway.