A tribute to Daryl Strawberry and Superman

A few weeks before the wedding, I made an appointment with the event coordinator of our wedding location to go over set up and layout, etc.  I texted my mom, who had planned to meet up with me later that day in town to go do a trial run of my hair, to see if she wanted to meet me.  I never heard from her, so I assumed she didn't want to come.

When I arrived, I met the lady and we made introductions.  Then she made a reference to needing to wait for someone with the same name as my father to arrive.

My dad?  Whaa?

I asked her what she was talking about, and she said he told her he was planning to meet us here too.

Apparently everyone in my family has stopped communicating with me.

Sure enough, as I was dialing his number to see what the heck was going on, I see his truck pulling up the drive.  Right after noticing that my mom wasn't with him, and thinking that was weird to leave her at home when we planned to meet up anyway, I saw her car.

Right behind his.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Greenpeace, the EPA, and Toyota for making the world a cleaner, less polluted place.  Because on this day, we sure weren't.

Nice Event Coordinator Lady showed us around where we'd be having our reception and the lawn where we'd be having the ceremony.  I'd provided her with a diagram of our wedding reception layout compliments of a brilliant little applet on The Knot She was very helpful in pointing out the things I didn't realize we'd need.  Like when she asked where we'd put the cake?  And I smartly replied that the cake would be on the cake table!  Then she asked me where the cake table was on my diagram.

Oh.

Nice Event Coordinator Lady scribbled in a few more things I'd forgotten on my diagram and we were on our way.

Mom and I had a few hours to kill before we drive up to Oregon City for the hair appointment so we poked around a few thrift shops in search of more table decorations.  I needed more frames for the table numbers and bottles for vases.  Do I have you scratching your head yet?

Remember the theme: Vintage G h e t t o.

We stopped at Baja Fresh for lunch.  They have this mango chipotle heaven in your mouth salad business there.  So, so good.   On our way over to the restaurant my car started making one of those noises that is akin to a human having chest pains.

Like, call 911 your car is about to blow up kind of noises.

Being the responsible car owner and mechanic that I am, I turned up the radio and kept on driving.  To my credit, when I parked the car, I did sort of kneel to the ground and look underneath the car to see if anything was hemorrhaging from up inside the guts part of the car.  I saw nothing.

I only know how to check 4 things in a car.

1) Windshield wiper fluid
2) Oil
3) Brake fluid
4) Gas

I quickly deduced that it was none of those things as it was sunny and 90 degrees outside, my first car was a Subaru with an oil leak so I know what that sounds like, my brakes were working fine (for once), and I had a full tank of gas.

So I did what any self-respecting girlfriend would do in this situation.  Texted MacGyver 15 minutes after he started his shift at work to tell him my car was "making a bad noise".

My mom and I spent lunch debating whether I should try to drive my car another 45 minutes away, or try to find a mechanic and diagnose/fix the problem.  The biggest issue was that I still had to get home to Cowtown at some point that weekend, and that was a good 2 hours away - much of it out of cell range.  I started having visions of my car going all Decepticon at 60 miles per hour, except instead of turning into a badass robot, it just flew into a million pieces scattered all over I-5.

We stopped in a Midas shop and this very nice guy offered to ride around the block with me and listen to my "bad noise".  After a few times of hearing it he told me what it was.

I don't remember now what he said it was, because all I heard was, "something something something your car isn't going to suddenly break into pieces while you're driving."

That was all I needed to hear.  I text MacGyver a quick, "just kidding!" and we were off to a hair appointment.  

I thought it would be a good idea to consult Shirley, my GPS goddess, for directions to this place as I'd never driven there from that direction.  But alas, Shirley failed me in the most epic of ways.

She took us hither and yonder, over brook and dale, over the river and through the woods to get to Oregon City.  What should have been a 30 minute drive with no traffic turned into a 90 minute ordeal of driving 20 miles an hour through every sleepy town between Salem and Oregon City.  I'm fairly certain we crossed the International Date Line at some point in that voyage.

By the time we arrived I was so frustrated I was shaking.  MacGyver's sister had asked me to bring some photos of the hairstyles I had in mind and after I finished telling her why we were late to our appointment, she asked me if I'd remembered the photos.  I realized that in my haste to JUST FREAKING GET THERE ALREADY, I had left them in the car, along with the hair pieces I made for the bridesmaids and for myself.

As I walked back out of the salon to my car, I was taking deep, calming breaths and telling myself that this day was already bad enough.  It would only get better form here.

And because I had to open my mouth and say THAT out loud, karma came and leveled me right on my ass.

I mean that in the most literal of ways.  Actually it was my face.

I'm still not exactly sure what happened either.  Just that one moment I was vertical, walking back inside with my box and my Marshmallow Man folder, and the next moment I was horizontal, face planted on the floor of the foyer in the salon.  I looked up at the two girls standing behind the counter frozen with their mouths gaping open.

What the hell...?!?!

Apparently my foot caught on the edge of a floor tile, or a leaf, or the air, or something, and I face planted in a most spectacular way.  My papers went fluttering, and my box flew across the room.  I don't know how those girls didn't lose it right there in front of me.  I don't think I would have had the same level of composure to not laugh hysterically had I been in their position.  Commendable, ladies.  Truly.

I started laughing, because I mean really, what else do you do in that situation?

When I went back to where MacGyver's sister and my mom were waiting, I told them the story and we all had a good laugh about that, though really neither of them were surprised.

I'm happy to say nothing is broken, though my leg and knees took the brunt of the fall and I'm pretty bruised up.

But my hair?  My hair is going to look soooo fabulous!!!

What About Bob?

All of my cars have had names.

My first car was a maroon Subaru grocery-getter station wagon.  His name was Harold.  You had to bang on the dashboard with your fist to get the windshield wipers to come on.  Harold also liked to overheat on the freeway late at night after I'd driven to Portland before work when I wasn't supposed to, and then my dad would have to come out into the driveway in the middle of the night in his boxers to check it out because there would be lots of scary smoke stuff coming out of the hood.

I loved that car.

I was without a car for a few years after that when I moved to college because parking was impossible near campus and we could ride the bus for free.  I had an awesome bicycle that I rode everywhere.  Now that I'm thinking about it, I never named my bike.  Huh.  Odd.

Anyway, after a few years of biking everywhere, I got another car.  She was a little blue Hyundai hatchback named Betty.  Betty was a little immodest.  She had some flatulence problems and a few other "wardrobe malfunctions", shall we say.  I had some car fanatic friends and they fixed her little exhaust issue up with some cardboard and duck tape, because that's really the only way to properly fix up a car.  She ran like a champ for a few years, and I even moved a few times with that car.  It's amazing how much furniture you can really cram into a hatchback!  We did have one small mishap where she dropped her muffler off in the middle of the road while we were driving.  I took her to Midas and gave her a stern talking to about leaving her bits about for everyone to see.  She did better after that.

Then I moved back to the city and was getting ready to go to graduate school.  My dad was worried about me driving Betty back and forth to downtown Portland, so he took me car shopping.  That's when we found Bob.

Bob is my little black Kia.  We got him at Bob Lamphere's Kia, and the license plate frame inserts said BOB on them.  My mom still teases me for naming him that.  I have tried to explain to her that he came that way, and he likes his name.  It would be impolite of me to ask him to change it.  Bob's therapist says change is not good for him.  It gives him ulcers.

In 2004 Bob and I were in an unfortunate accident (not my fault) and he was severely damaged, though I was miraculously unharmed.  I thought that might be the end of Bob, but after several weeks in ICU, he was resurrected and returned to his former spunky self.

Bob got new shoes last winter in what shall forever be named "The Great Tire Debaucle of 2010".  We don't speak of that in our house anymore for reasons I shall not detail here.  Maybe later, in say, 200 years.

Bob's is now pushing 96,000+ miles.  Which, in Kia years, is darn near geriatric!

As with everyone, things don't always work as well as they used to as we age.  For a while now Bob has had some trouble with his belts.  They get a little wiggly, and then the gaggle of screaming banchees that lives in Bob's engine bay lets loose when you turn on the AC.  Or start the car.  Or drive the car.  We're looking in to anger management classes for them.

I can't remember exactly when it started, but Bob began leaking brake fluid.  I'm going to say it was sometime in the spring.  It was only a little at first, so we did what any respectable, caring, responsible car owners would do and we topped off the brake fluid and ignored it.  We did this a few times a week for a few months.  Then one day after the car had been sitting for a few weeks while we were on vacation, I went to go leave our driveway to pick our dogs up and flew out into the middle of the road.

I had no brakes.

None.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  No soup for you!

Apparently an air bubble had infiltrated Bob's brake lines.  Translation: Bob had a serious case of gas.

MacGyver bled the brakes and everything seemed to be back in working order.  That's when we started talking about maybe thinking we might want to consider taking Bob to the doctor.  Someday.

Then it happened again and MacGyver made the call.

Bob is currently in the shop getting tennis balls installed on his walker.

I hope that this makes him feel better.