Thursday, March 5, 2009

Transportation

I love my husband. I do.

That said, there are times when I feel it would be completely appropriate to kick his ass up around his ears.

My Monte Carlo is totaled, towed and gone away. I didn’t love that car (it was a giant, rolling blind spot), but it was a car. A car that allowed me to LEAVE MY HOUSE.

Without the car, the only forms of transportation available to me are my bicycle and my motorcycle. In case you’re not from around here, this is Minnesota and it is winter and there are still several inches of snow on the ground, making either of these options very unattractive.

So, getting another car was a pretty high priority for me. But a couple of nights ago, the mister said, “why don’t you just hang on to the money from the insurance company. You know, just in case we need it. You can drive my shitbox Jeep and I'll drive the pickup until you get a new job and then you can get a new car.”

I dislike that Jeep intensely. It shakes over 50 miles an hour, it sucks gas like nothing else (seriously, I burned through $40 worth of fuel in an afternoon of going to Target and my parents' house), and the passenger door has the distressing tendency of popping open at random times. Like, when you’re doing 65 on the interstate.

But, realistically speaking, I don’t have to drive much right now. The occasional job interview, assuming I ever get one (please, God), the grocery store, the gym. So, despite my dislike of the Jeep, I saw the wisdom of the mister’s suggestion and, while I continued looking at cars, I had decided only to get one if it was one of those perfect deal kind of things.

On Monday, though, the mister left me the truck. I got in it to go to my eye doctor appointment, and, haha, the thing wouldn’t start. Wouldn’t turn over. Wouldn’t even crank. Just made a hollow clicking sound as I desperately turned the key in the ignition. I had to call my mom for a ride, like I was 14 and wanted to go to the mall.

But I took a breath, realized it was a mechanical failure that the mister was able to fix and we would be back to having two vehicles. I could still hold off on looking for a new car.

Then, yesterday.

I had a bunch of stuff to do, including some hoop jumping for unemployment and other errands.

The mister left me the Jeep and took his truck to work. When I was showered, dressed and ready to go, he called and said he needed the Jeep.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll drive it up to your office and trade keys with you.”

No, no. That’s not what he had in mind. He drove the truck home with the bed loaded with 55 gallon drums of hydraulic oil. Then he rigged one of the full barrels to an empty barrel in my garage by way of a complex system of hoses, pumps, and filters, effectively tethering the truck to the garage. No way was I going to be able to drive that.

Then he took the Jeep and informed me that he was going to be gone until 7:00 that evening. No questions regarding what I had planned for the day, no acknowledgment that his attaching the truck to the garage was a giant inconvenience for me, or even an awareness that I had been essentially stuck in the house for three straight days and might want to GET THE FUCK OUT. He just placed an absent-minded kiss on my cheek, hopped in the Jeep and blithely drove back to work.

So yours truly was housebound, yet again. Luckily, I didn’t have anything pressing scheduled (like, say a job interview) and I was able to reschedule everything. Plus, my friend B was kind enough to pick me up and take me out for Mexican food, probably because she could sense that I was thisclose to freaking out. But that would be twice in three days that the mister’s brilliant plan has failed and I’ve ended up stuck at home.

I don’t like that. At all.

I admire the women that can stay home and find contentment in it. I admire them because I cannot do it. I cannot find joy in housewifely type things – I feel no sense of purpose or enjoyment. I hate cleaning. I don’t like tidying up. I can’t do yard work because my yard is still buried under six inches of snow. Doing laundry annoys me, and so help me God, I am not picking up the mister’s shit, even though it would give me a great deal to do and keep me busy for days on end. I feel isolated. Lonely. Idle. Bored. I miss talking to people.

So, first order of business is to find a new job. Second order, though, is to figure out the transportation thing so I can get out of the house instead of staying in my pajamas all day and sinking into a pit. Whether this means I officially call the Jeep mine, the way the Monte Carlo was mine, meaning the mister can no longer preempt my right to drive it or I find a decent used car for cheap (not as hard as it sounds, actually), I’m doing something.

*FYI: the mister has lots of vehicles, including the big blue truck, the jeep, two mustangs, and a motorcycle. Unfortunately, the motorcycle is not driveable in the winter (duh), one mustang doesn't have an engine (well, it does, it's just on a shelf in the garage), and the other is NOT a good winter car (with 8 cylinders and rear wheel drive, it's basically a pretty silver spin-out waiting to happen). That leaves the Jeep and the big blue truck.

*Also FYI: public transit is so not an option. Minnesota does not believe in user-friendly public transit.

1 comment:

MOLLY said...

I'm sorry you're stuck in the house - it's fun for a few days and then it's enough to drive a girl crazy. Hang in there!