Rack...er...Lake City

My oh my, the unseen chaos a quick weekend to see the family can bring…

This past weekend I drove down to the Tampa area to visit family. I intended to leave on Thursday but Seth called me that evening and said my car was acting up, he explained it in great detail but it went in one ear and out the other, much like I'm sure the details of my shoe shopping do to him. We took the car to a transmission shop and were pleasantly surprised when they said they could fix the issue for $130. Sweet, right? Wrong.

The trip down to Tampa (I left on Friday, alone, because Seth was going TDY to IFF a few days later) was uneventful, the car ran well (or so it seemed) and I had a grand old time with the familia. Then came the drive home. About 30 miles north of Gainesville I stopped to get gas, when getting back on the highway I noticed my car seemed to be struggling as if it were going up a hill, but guess what, I wasn't going up a hill. Then on the highway the car wouldn't go faster than 40MPH, and at 40 the RPM was damn near a 5. On top of all that the needle to the speedometer was going wacko so the only reason I knew how fast I was going was because of my GPS.

After phoning both Seth and my dad and getting a pep talk from each of them I was able to calm down a bit - after I pulled over to the side of the highway, of course, and bawled my eyes out for having to deal with it all alone. But once I let out the 'ugly cry' I was able to compose myself, call my dad back and try to figure this shiz out. It was Sunday so no mechanics or rental car places were open so I was stuck in Lake City. And since I equate every phrase and situation to a song the first thing that popped in my head when I finally realized the name of the town I was in was, "Lake City bitch, Lake, Lake City bitch" complete with a shoulder shrug and everything, all I needed was a posse and I could've been the star of the number one music video on MTV, wait, they don't play music anymore...

After finding a hotel and searching in vein for the room's minibar I accepted the fact that I was going to be purchasing a new car by my lonesome, in a random town 250ish miles from home, a year sooner than expected.

You see, we knew this day was coming. When we were in college we both drove POS's. Seth truck at the time was more of a piece of shit than my Neon so when we commissioned he treated himself to a new truck; a super purdy F150 quad cab. But I wasn't about to trade in my Neon because I loved not having a car payment. So we decided that we would hold off on replacing my Neon until we were preggo with our hopefully-soon-to-be-concieved-bambino. Well, that plan obviously went down the drain as did my patience when I woke up the next morning to begin my car buying experience. 

I could write a damn book on the experience but I'll spare us all the pain of such a saga. Long story short I left Lake city bitch, Lake, Lake City with a car. A 2012 Kia Sorento Sx to be exact. It's purdy. It's an SUV because we have more kids than we do hands. It's not 'hood' like my Neon was. It doesn't leave me stranded on a highway in towns with names that remind me of a song with explicit lyrics. It does weird things like automatically folds in the mirrors when I lock it and begins playing music that's on my iPhone when I accidentally touch a button that obviously links the car and phone up. It shows me what's behind me when I'm in reverse. Basically it has all the luxuries that I'm sure all of ya'lls cars have. It's just that I've been pushin' a 2005 Dodge Neon for the past seven years so all these things that my Kia has seem super awesome to me, whereas they are probably standard to all of you. 

It sucked being stranded in a strange town alone but that part I could shake with the help of a few tiny bottles of vodka. It was the car buying process that was tough. I've always known how much I need my Love but I was further reminded of the well-oiled machine we've become as a 'power couple' as my father calls it. It was such a huge decision to make. I started the car hunting process at 0800 and got home at 930pm. I know that 12 hours doesn't seem like a long time when you're talking about a $30,000 investment but it was an eon to me. Since Seth is TDY to IFF I was only able to talk to him once throughout that whole day. We, of course, talked about a price to stay under, colors we liked, features we wanted, but that didn't help console me when I had to sign on the dotted line without him giving me the final go-ahead, without him knowing the make, model and price of the car I had decided on. 


I bought a car on Monday. But not only did I buy a car, I was also reminded how much I rely on my patient, supportive husband. And how much of a part of me he is. Not just in the hi-we're-married part of it all but in the you-were-made-soley-for-me-and-are-supportive-and-understanding aspect of it all. It sounds so silly that this situation could remind me of that but it did. When I had to leave the car salesman's office to go outside and cry because I just wanted to talk to Seth before making the decision, that's when I realized how much he is a part of me, even when he's in Mississippi flying his heart out and I'm stuck in Lake City...bitch.


Xoxo,

Lor