The Worst Fourth

I definitely wasn't expecting anything grand out of my Fourth of July this year.

Last year I worked all day, got a flat tire, set off a few fireworks with Alexa, packed for my upcoming drive to Florida/flight to Nicaragua, then set off fireworks in Luis's backyard with a bunch of his friends. We crashed early because we had to leave for Florida in the morning (I promise to explain my love for Nicaragua on a later post, because it will be a loooooong post)

This year, it was a little more.... exciting, for lack of a better word.

Once again, I worked, but only half the day. Then I headed on to Kennesaw to shower and get ready for a, hopefully, fun Fourth. I felt terribly sick and we had zero plans, but I demand to be fabulous anyways.

Then I went over to Luis's house, and guess what? I got another flat tire!!! I seriously hope that this isn't about to become some perversely tragic Fourth of July tradition for me, because I simply can't deal with that every year.

Lucky me, I was probably less than two miles away from Luis's when it gave out. So I just pretended to ignore the extremely bouncy drive to his parking lot. Finally, I got there and he stepped out to look at the car. Oh, did I mention that it was raining??? Last year too.

Check out this flat

How does that even happen??? I didn't hit anything or run over anything. I was just driving (at a safe speed too) and boom, all of a sudden the bumpy, uh-oh-I-think-I-have-a-flat driving started.

Anyways, the story gets better. Luis goes and tries to change the tire himself (because he's a man and for some stupid reason, men refuse to call professionals to fix things when needed, regardless of the pretty dime I pay my insurance company for unlimited roadside assistance) and he spends probably over an hour playing with the lug nuts and different tools.

Finally, Rodrigo and Jessica show up. Jessica and I leave the boys to their play mechanic games to work on an essay, and eventually, after another hour of playtime, they come back in defeat. Apparently, one of the lug nuts is 'stripped' (whatever that means) and normal tools can't get it out. So FINALLY, the boys let me call Geico to get this thing sorted out.

I explain to the insurance lady exactly what the issue with the bolt is and everything. The man she sends had no idea that the bolt was stripped before coming and he didn't have the tool for it. He leaves, being of no help other than to tell me to curse out my insurance lady (but she's so sweet I could never. Plus, call center people are only human! They make mistakes too!). I call Geico back and explain to the lady again everything that happened. This time she calls the companies around and asks about my specific problem. None of the companies do what I need. Great.

At this point my only option is to get a tow to a tire shop to fix my poor baby Lulu. The only problem? It's past 10 PM on a holiday. So I just get a reference number and leave it to deal with later. We finished the paper then went to Waffle House (because nothing is more patriotic in the South than Waffle House at midnight). It was too rainy to enjoy fireworks, so we settled for just listening to the loud bangs outside.

Yesterday morning I left for work with Luis's car. After work I come back and we tow the car to the tire shop, wait for a good 45 minutes in the lobby, and pay 9 bucks to find out that the bolt wasn't stripped at all, it was just differently shaped. Great.

So now I'm driving around on a spare until I have time to go to a used tire shop, because I have two more tires that look like they're about to give out too so I might as well replace them all.

Yay for car troubles, which I apparently have way too many of.

Damsel in Distress

This weekend has been absolutely insane!

And yes, I know that it's already Tuesday.

I don't even know where to start.

Probably Friday morning when I got woken up 9am with my boss calling me. So I wake up at nine, answer her questions, then I can't go back to sleep. So of course, I start net surfing (which consisted of lots of blogging, Polyvore, and Pinterest) until 10 30. Then I get ready to go to my 11 45-close shift. At 11 30, as I'm about to pull into the store, another manager calls me, says we're super slow, and asks me not to come in until 2. So I turn around, spend more time surfing, then head back to work. From there on, it was a normal work day. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but since it happened on disaster weekend, I'll include it.

Then Saturday morning, I wasn't supposed to get in until 2, but a third manager calls me (again at 9am) and asks me to come in early because we're dying. So of course, great little busy bee can't say no me goes in at 9am... until close. Still not a bad day, just long, and I've worked longer shifts many many times. Now, I had plans to see Luis after I got off work. We were meeting at Kennesaw after I got off work, but that was a LOT later than I thought it was going to be. I got of work at around 11 30, then I volunteered to take this kid home, who happens to live 45 minutes away from work, and another 30 minutes away from where I live. Great. It was a nice ride though. I got to learn a little about my team member and he got to know a little bit about me and that's pretty much what building relationships is about, right? But then of course, Luis was upset, but he got over it soon and everything went back to normal.

Then Sunday... Oh boy Sunday. First, I had a meeting at noon, but it got cancelled because the other person overslept and we rescheduled for this upcoming Sunday. Then Luis and I took my car to get washed (oh yea, I forgot to mention that I spilled milkshake and sweet tea all over my car Saturday night after I dropped the kid off) which cost more money than I was willing to spend, but those carpets needed to get shampooed and I sure wasn't about to do it. Then we went out to eat, went to church, all that fun Sunday stuff.

Then the real disaster starts. At 11pm, as I'm driving home from church, some idiot decides that he's not going to check incoming traffic before making a right turn. He pulls right in front of me, and I was too close and going too fast to brake and avoid the accident. So I swerve to avoid hitting this guy's car and driving him off the road into the ditch, and I end up in the ditch instead. And now my poor baby girl Lulu is hurt ):

I got her all cleaned up and pretty, just to get her all dented up and muddy.

No more driver side rear view mirror

No more front bumper

All these cracks

And dents

And I even busted up her inside too

My poor Lulu ):

And her radiator got busted from the bottom, so I can't even drive her until she gets fixed. Luckily, Luis has a mechanic friend who's fixing her up for me (at least the radiator and maybe the mirror). So she'll be drive-able again by tonight, hopefully. Yesterday I went around and talked to a couple of different mechanics at Firestone and some other mechanic places, but the quotes I got were between $300 and $900, and I work fast food, I don't have that kind of money!

And my Monday was probably the worst, just because of all the stress I was under. I didn't go to any of my classes because I ended up spending the night at Luis's, because that's where the car was closest to and I wasn't about to drive 40 minutes to Kennesaw without a mirror (this was before I knew the radiator was busted). Plus, I had a ridiculously painful headache and was a little disorientated from the accident. So Monday morning, Luis and his mom are playing mechanic with my car, looking at everything that got damaged. Finally, they notice that the radiator is empty and there's lots of green liquid under my car. So they go ahead and fill the radiator up with water, and it takes all of 5 minutes for the water to end up on the floor. Which is a good thing that they played with it first, cause I was totally about to drive the car without the mirror.

Luis has to go to school, and I have to go to work and talk to mechanics. So he drops me off at work, which is conveniently located next to a mechanic. I walk on over to talk to my lovely Firestone mechanics, and the price range is WAY above what I can afford, even with the birthday splurging money I had set aside. So I go back to Chick-fil-A and chill in the office until Luis comes back from school. Then he picks me up, takes me to Kennesaw to pick up my uniform (and apply makeup, because up until this point, I looked like Medusa), then we turn right back around to go back so I can work.

I stay at CFA working and he goes back to his place to call the tow truck to take the car to Sam's house. Now, I only had a short 4 hour shift until 8. Sam got out of work at 6. So at 6 30ish, Luis calls the tow truck and they tell him that they'll be there at 7 30. I get off of work at 8, call Luis to come pick me up, but he can't because the tow truck STILL isn't there. The tow truck is TWO WHOLE HOURS LATE!!! I sat in the office for two hours doing nothing, being absolutely bored out of my mind, waiting for the tow truck to show up and Luis come pick me up. I am super frustrated at this point, because I wanted Lulu repaired yesterday, so I could go on my birthday shopping trip today, but apparently no one is working under my schedule! The frustration was overwhelming and I got very very snappy.

Finally, Luis picks me up and takes me to Sam's house. It was 10pm and cold and I had a headache and was way past my snappy point, but of course I put on a smile and was very cordial. Of course, the guy can't fix my car that night. Especially since it was 10 and all the auto repair parts stores close at 9. So Sam told me to buy a new radiator and antifreeze to put in it. Then, he tells me even more bad news. Apparently the part of the car that controls the air conditioning got broken too, but he's not 100 per cent sure if it's broken broken. So tonight when he comes home from work, he's going to fix the radiator, turn on the car, try out the AC, and let me know if that needs fixing too. We are a month away from summer and my air conditioning is busted. Could this get any worse??

Of course it can. The bumper is also hanging off, so I need to take the car to a car body shop and the whole bumper replaced, and I'm sure that's not cheap. So I'll be driving around with a ratchet car with a broken bumper for a while, cause "ain't nobody got money for that." My life.

And to make matters worse, my shopping trip today got cancelled, because the friend I was going with doesn't have a car and I was the ride... But obviously that didn't pan through. We're rescheduling for next Tuesday, so hopefully everything works out for then.

And now, I will sit in my bed, web-surfing for the rest of the day because all my plans have been cancelled (and I had quite a few plans too D:). No more shopping, no more mani-pedi, no more lunch with friends, no more Scrappy the Owl, no more anything. Just loneliness and my laptops.

And yes, I am being a drama queen right now. I'm a damsel in distress, what else am I supposed to do??