The little voice inside my head committed battery and will probably die of emphysema all because a stupid vampire broke my windshield

The other day, I pulled into our driveway and drove over a bump of ice. Before I knew what was happening, that bitchy shrew of a vampire, the one that’s been sucking the life blood out of our savings via the hose connected to our new washer and dryer, flew out of our laundry room and out the front door and glommed onto my windshield and commenced sucking the marrow out of the kids’ college funds. Suddenly that little tiny divot in the glass, courtesy of a pebble fart from a gassy snowplow a week prior, morphed into a horizontal crack wide enough to make me think that a transparent, obese plumber had jumped on the hood of my car, bent down and mooned me sideways.

Reason #736 why I hate winter. And snow. And the smell of curry. And no, curry has nothing to do with my windshield but I threw it in there anyway because HGTV says items should be displayed in groups of three so if they read this blog, I want them to know that I’m listening, I follow directions and I’m available to host my own show. Oh, and Nate sprinkled curry on his pizza the other night because he’s sadistic and weird and my house still reeks of the stuff and it’s hard to concentrate on anything else when you feel like someone stuffed India up your nose without your permission.

I called our insurance company and learned that glass coverage costs only $9 a year which is awesome only if you actually have glass coverage which we did not because WHO THE HELL KNOWS. So instead of it being awesome, it was sucky in the way only a 20/20 hindsight scenario can suck which? Is pretty much the big, fat, hairy, herpes-infested, orangutan-balls suckage kind of way. Also not nifty? Lapsing into a coma full of stupid and calling your insurance company to tell them about your cracked windshield before you confirm your coverage. You know, as opposed to confirming your coverage first and keeping your big mouth shut about the windshield until after you add the glass coverage and then waiting until the next day to call them at which time you go all Alanis Morissette on them by yelling I JUST ADDED GLASS COVERAGE YESTERDAY AND BROKE MY WINDSHIELD TODAY! I KNOW! ISN’T THAT IRONIC?

Of all the things at which I excel, including picking my cuticles until they bleed, growing a warm, furry winter coat on my legs by noon and nagging Nate to paint rooms over and over and over and OH MY GOD, REMIND ME AGAIN WHY I MARRIED YOU, I do believe my knack of unwittingly choosing the grossest, most disgusting places at which to do business tops the list. Case in point, the schlepp of an attorney who took a thirty minute break from filming an episode of Hoarders to re-write our wills.

I know small auto garages are dirty. I know they’re greasy and grimy. And they usually don’t have semi-decent waiting rooms with coffee and satellite TV and free Wi-Fi, unlike your typical pricey dealership which is irony at its best, don’t you think? Because who’s limber or multi-tasky enough to drink a latte and watch Good Morning America and surf social media all while bending over and grabbing their ankles for three hours? Although you probably could update your Facebook status provided you didn’t pass out from the blood gushing to your head and you were really good at texting upside down but seriously, who’s going to want to read it?

My point, and I do have one, is that I’m not unaware of what a traditional auto garage looks like. However, I was totally and completely unprepared to enter this particular business and have Philip Morris jam its tongue down my throat and french kiss my esophagus. The smell of stale, rancid cigarette smoke nearly brought me to my knees and tried to kill my coat by smothering it. I attempted to hold my breathe while I spoke to the owner which is hard enough to manage in and of itself but it’s virtually impossible when you’re flashing back to your muscular, tattooed, twenty-three year old boyfriend whose only talent was his uncanny ability to take a huge hit off a bong and then carry on an entire conversation about the V8 on his 1970 Dodge Charger without exhaling.

(CliffsNotes: We went out for one week. I was seventeen at the time. His name was Larry but my mom used to call him Gray Hairs #65 – 3,688.)

I was told that it would be ninety minutes and that I could wait in the office if I was so inclined but seeing as how it would have been nearly impossible to drive Helena to karate later that day if I succumbed to lung cancer by lunch, I was pretty much disinclined. I left before the little voice inside my head screaming I AM ASPHYXIATING AND NO ONE CARES crawled out of my eyeball and smacked the owner upside the head with its purse.

I spent the next ninety minutes walking around a dinky little town and, judging by the three individuals who approached me one right after the other within the first ten minutes, I decided I wasn’t in Kansas anymore and instead, had been transported to that magical land known as Boozehounds Who Get Wasted Before Noon. More flashbacks and I had to look around me to make sure I hadn’t driven to my apartment in college, circa 1988, by mistake.

(CliffsNotes: beer was cheap.)

One whiff of their breath and I suspected that each one was an undercover agent of the garage tasked with walking up and down nearby streets and parking lots because what better way to drum up business than to have the chrome stripped off all bumpers in a three block radius?

Ninety minutes later, my windshield was replaced and I was frozen. I quickly paid my bill with a check before the little voice inside my head screaming WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T TAKE CREDIT CARDS shimmied down the icicle hanging from my nose and kicked the owner in the gonads with its left foot.

My car now smells like urethane adhesive.

My coat now smells like Philip Morris’ sex towel after an all-night orgy.

And my house still smells like curry.

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