I promised sears I would tell this story on stage every night until the lawsuit settled...

     The chaos has returned and it brought it's friends, turmoil and misfortune.  Today was supposed to be a fun day at the mall.  My playgroup was meeting for lunch and a short walk around the shops and I was very much looking forward to a good romp with the mommies.  Shut up, that did not come off as sexual. Nearly 5 hours, 2 tires, an alignment, an obscure battery-related part, and 2 overly tired children later,  I wasn't singing the "Fun Times with Cassidy" theme song or doing the matching, jaunty jig.

     My first disappointment today was when my favorite mommy friend made the decision that hermitage better fits her lifestyle and has recently become rather reclusive.  It's not her fault, she has a lot on her plate.  However, much of my excitement for the morning meetup was to catch up with her. 
     So my first thought was Oh!  I can skip it, put the kids in extended care at the gym and go get my hair cut.  But then I started to feel a twinge of guilt because Michael loves going to the mall and seeing his buddies.  Plus, I do have other friends that I enjoy spending time with that would be going.  What I should have done, was stay home and eat chips in my pajamas.

     When I stopped to get gas across the street from the mall, I not only got the slowest pump on the planet but ended up calling my friend Kristine to come give me a jump start.  And since I hadn't had to jump a car since Driver's Ed. in 11th grade, we pulled her boss over from the Vitamin Shoppe to come connect the cables. It's embarrassingly simple, and if it hadn't been 10 1/2 years, 2 kids, and a massive hemorrhage of brain cells since I've had to use that knowledge...then I could have done it myself.  But since Bossman declared "Just so you all know, these ladies needed a man over here!" as soon as he hit the parking lot, I clearly didn't have the assets to complete the task.  How could I have left my frank and beans behind on a day like this?

   My next mistake was dropping the car off at my friendly Sears Automotive Center, where the assnugget named George clearly didn't want to be working today...or possibly ever.  I was waiting in the car with Complainypants McWhinerson Michael and a screaming baby while he did some kind of 9283748237498 point inspection on the car in front of me.  Then when I told him my problem, he directed me to move into the spot next to me AFTER the delivery truck vacated it at an indeterminable time.  After about 15 minutes, I actually got out of the car and asked the delivery guy if he was leaving in the next century. 
     Assnugget George then helped 4 teenagers deliberate over cheap tire for another 10 minutes before acknowledging my presence.  Why?  Well, it's a scientific fact that assnuggets lack the glands necessary to multitask, but often have an excess of sweat glands.  He then lectured me on the baldness of my tires and bullied me into buying 2 new ones, rotating the existing ones, and probably giving him some kind of commission for hassling me and smelling like cologne and B.O.  Then he wrapped it up with the infamous words, "It will be ready in about 2 hours."

     He did call me about 2 hours later and inform me that my back, passenger side tire had a nail in it.  We had already had a stellar dialogue going back and forth on how I really didn't want to do much of this before talking to my husband.  "Don't do any more to the tires, I want to talk it over with my husband first before--"  Then I was cut off with, "Well you still want us to do the front tires, right?  You agreed to that already!"  He was almost panicked at this point, and I reassured him that was the deal.  "But you want me to keep the nail in it and send you home on a leaking tire?"
      Well, no.  But I did want to consider getting two more tires and the thought of spending more dough to get that one fixed didn't make much sense to me--especially since it had been a slow leak for a good year now and no Michael Bay caliber explosions on the highway had occured.  But the thought of having to come back there, or even somewhere else where I would have to deal with such douchebaggery just made me agree to the damn patch job. When I asked him how much the repair would cost, he said this...and I'm not paraphrasing..."You mean the amount I told you this morning and printed on your invoice?  $19.95." 

     I headed back over to Sears since Assnugget George informed me that my car would "be ready very soon."  And perhaps truthful to some degree, since the Sears Automotive Center is some kind of vacuous time suck where laws of physics don't apply.  I left the mall at 3:30, after arriving at 10:45.  And the whole way home all I could think of was Ron White's comedy bit about the Sears mechanic and hoping it wasn't going to be true in my case.  "Apparently he was sick on lugnut day, but they still let him work on my van!"  




Today's subject line quote is from Ron White,  They Call me "Tater Salad".