The Regal Beagle, not so regal

02/25/06, Morning time:
Balls. I knew that something was coming - like UCESP (unreliable car ESP). My car has been hesitating and coughing – and then, yesterday at the Grease Monkey in Castle Rock freakin’ Colorado it died…one-half block on a frontage road from a service station. The weirdos at Grease Monkey just kept trying to start it while they all stood around and looked at it blankly. Me: get away, get away from it! I know not a single soul in the town, my roommate is ETA four hours, at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. If it weren’t for the impending sale of my OTHER kidney to pay for the freaking car, it would have been kinda cool.

AAA Nebraska got me transferred to AAA Colorado (did you know each state’s AAA are separate “clubs”?!?). A very sweet older man, garbed as retired ranchers tend to be, with at least one artificial leg came to rescue the Regal Beagle from the Grease Monkeys. Walking down the car ramp he walked gracefully with one leg, lifting the other to the side while climbing over towing gadgets. He reminded me of the quiet, Schroeder/Harder German mechanics of northeastern Nebraska. In fact, the peeling, car-lot logo still reads “Ponca Motors.” The old man picked up my car, one-half block away, and towed it to the service station and advised me to be sure if they couldn’t fix it, they give me a ride home.

I waited in the lobby for about two hours and I was happy to do so – I was glad they at least got it in to look at it. The growing anxiety, loneliness and dark combined with the acrid smell of new tires, oil and general machine gave me a headache. An inarticulate customer service manager talked for FORTY-FIVE minutes with a young man about tires that had improperly been installed on his car – a young man, I might add, who prefaced the conversation by stating that his license had been revoked by a DUI pushing his points over the limit. This CSM used the phrase, “speed rated” in the conversation approximately 600 times. They just repeated the same things over, and over and over to one another. Confirming, reaffirming and cementing, and then confirming the cementing that in fact the other vendor had installed improper speed rated tires on the drunk driver’s car. “SHUT UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT THE DAMN SPEED RATED TIRES! IF YOU SAY SPEED RATED ONE MORE TIME SO HELP ME GOD I WILL CLEAN UP THIS LOBBY AND REDECORATE WITH PINK BUNNIES!”

I was doing just fine with everything until New Roommate left this morning for work and a reminder that he’ll return late Monday night. Now I feel v. stuck and alone. I am going to turn on some David Cross, which might keep me from crying like a baby.