Radiators, Neil Diamond and Alleged Chicken Pot Pie

Last Thursday I opted out of a blog post because I was recovering from having a really bad day the previous day. Here's the details:

As weird as it may sound, occasionally I have a day (or days) where I feel kind of 'out of it.' "Lost," if you will. I don't know how else to describe the feeling. I'll be somewhere running an errand or something and I'll just get this feeling come over me where I don't understand why I'm where I'm at. It's not a blackout or memory loss or anything like that, I just feel kind of disconnected from everything. It's not triggered by anything that I can tell. Not particularly sad or anything, just kind of there. Well, I had one of those days last Wednesday.

It started with me running by the bank drive-thru and making a deposit. Then on to the place where I get a haircut. When I pulled in, the car was smoking from beneath the hood (wonderful). After I parked, I popped the hood and noticed that the engine, etc. (I so can't retain car knowledge, it's like Algebra to me) was wet. Apparently something had boiled over. I just sighed and went inside to get my haircut. That's when I commenced zoning out.

While the guy cut my hair (just like he's done dozens of times before), I just sat there, my mind kind of drifting. At one point, I looked up at my hair and it was looking normal, he asked if that was okay, and I told him a little shorter on the top, so he goes back to cutting and shaving and shaving and snipping. Meanwhile, I continue to zone out. Bad idea.

Next thing I know, I look up and I look like I just got the Short Bus Special. The sides were shaved all weird and at these fucked-up isosceles triangle angles, up under by hair, while the top was longer, but verging on a bowl cut. It was horrible. I don't know what he did to me. I've never even seen anything like this except, and I'm being totally serious, on a retarded person.

In general, I don't get worked up over my hair. My philosophy is if it's too short, it'll grown back. No big deal. I think I was able to maintain that philosophy for so long because I've never really gotten a truly bad haircut. That all changed last Wednesday. It looks awful. I just sighed and said "That's fine." What else could I do? Short of getting a Burr (which in hindsight, I should have and still might), there's really no remedy for a bad haircut. I paid him and left.

Instead of getting in the car, I decided to let it cool off for a while while I walked around the corner to the grocery store to pick up some groceries. One thing I'd noticed was that the area that was labeled "radiator fluid" was empty, so I thought I'd pick some up while I was at the store.

I walk in, wishing I had a cap or a fuckin' beret, ANYTHING to wear on my head. I got a cart and went straight to the automotive aisle. I didn't see anything that said "radiator" fluid, but I did see "coolant." I was tempted to grab it and give it a shot, but what if I was wrong and it REALLY fucked up the car? Naturally, the one time I decide to use my goddamn cell phone to actually make an "emergency" phone call (the whole reason behind its purchase), no one is anywhere to be found. I'm talking Night of the Comet deserted.

Desperate (and against my better judgement) I decided to ask someone that worked there. Naturally, the fat bitch filing her nails at the "Customer Service" counter was zero help. Thanks a lot, Tiny. I asked the 12 year old at the Express Checkout. He said they were the same thing. I was skeptical because he was still teething. However, his customer, a nice 50-something woman with an obvious penchant for tanning, judging from her scaly epidermis, was SUPER helpful and nice as could be (my faith in humanity was briefly restored!). Turns out she used to work for General Motors (we have a plant here) and she told me it was indeed the same thing and exactly what I needed to do.

Relieved, I proceeded to wander around the store...slowly, but surely drifting away again. I caught myself standing in front of things I didn't even need/want, just staring. Mesmerized by soup or lightbulbs, I was just there. I was probably in the store for like an hour before I finally checked out and headed back to the car. I loaded the groceries and popped the hood, took off the radiator cap: bone dry. Poured the entire bottle of coolant in. It was like a bottomless pit, yet nothing was leaking out underneath the car to indicate a leak. I gave up, crossed my fingers and went up the street to return DVDs. Even with car trouble, I didn't want to get stuck with late fees for three movies I didn't even like that much. Before I got there, the temperature gauge was almost to the red mark, indicating overheating. I made it there, parked and again, more smoking AND now a burned rubber smell. Great. *sigh*

I waited for a while, crossed my fingers again, and headed home, the shortest route I could. Naturally, I managed to hit a school zone at high tide. And naturally, the cocksucker 6 cars ahead of me was going 10mph instead of the normal 20mph. Isn't that how it always fuckin' works out? Whether your car is on the verge of overheating, stalling out or you're having an intestinal crisis (AKA a Maalox Moment), the motherfucker in front of you is on an extended sightseeing holiday. Fuck! I finally had to bypass the retard conga line and park in a nearby neighborhood so that the car could cool off (and I could too...it was a record 94º that day).

As fate would have it, at the end of the street was this garage that I pass all the time, but have only stopped at once when there was a squealing sound coming from under the hood. As it turned out, one of the belts just needed a shot of WD-40, which the mechanic gave it and said "no charge." Very nice. So I pulled in.


The garage is ran by a Czech guy and he took my keys so they could see what the problem was while I sat in the waiting room. They had both the radio and the TV on. Why, I don't know. Since no one else was there, I opted to turn off the TV, since the reception sucked and the radio was set to the Oldies station, and Oldies always make anyone feel better. As I was sitting there, I noticed that there was a yellow parakeet in a cage behind the register. Since the majority of the magazines were car shit, or circa 1995, I just sat there listening to the Oldies station and watching the bird play with his jingle bell ferris wheel toy.

While I was sitting there, on the verge of fading away again, a Neil Diamond song came on the radio. The bird, I swear I'm not making this up, started to dance like crazy, bobbing his head up and down and wagging his tail. Like some kind of kook I started laughing outloud. It was just too funny. After the song was over, the bird returned to his ferris wheel toy and there was no more bird boogie...until roughly 8 songs later when The Supremes' Baby Love came on, then he stopped everything and started to dance again. It was a hoot.

Shortly thereafter I found out I needed a new radiator, some thing that regulated the car's temperature and something else I forget the name of. After quoting me a price (which was more than fair, after calling around and getting some estimates, but still expen$ive {to me anyway}), I said okay and that I'd be back tomorrow. I then proceeded to drive home with my emergency brake ON. FUCK! I wondered why the car appeared to be operating even worse than when I pulled in. As it turns out, they set the emergency brake while they inspected it. I had no idea. I've NEVER used the emergency brake, so it didn't even occur to me to check it. DERR. I'm an idiot.

I get home and I'm wiped out. It's been 7 hours since I left home that morning and I just want to relax. No sooner do I strip down to my underwear and T-shirt than the fuckin' doorbell rings. I can tell by the ring (Long story short: I can generally tell by the way the person rings the doorbell who it is) that it's Ms. Fossil, my geriatric next door neighbor who has an affinity for pawning off her leftovers on me. I tried to locate my pants, but had already misplaced them, so I said 'fuck it, who cares' and proceeded to answer the door anyway. Sure enough, it was Ms. Fossil bearing manna. This time it consisted of a 3/4 eaten homemade chicken pot pie (in regular-sized pie tin: shown) and a corn muffin. It was still warm, so I said thank you and decided to sit down and give it a whirl. With the kind of day I was having, how could it get any worse, right? Wrong. I take a bite and the first mouthful I get a hearty helping of slimy okra. OKRA! WTF is okra doing in a goddamn chicken pot pie?!! Peas, okay. Carrots, I can buy that. Maybe even onion, broccoli or potatoes, but okra? My curiosity getting the better of me, I peeled back the top layer and looked inside. Here's what I found: Okra, peas, carrots, corn, green beans, boiled egg, lima beans and 3 pieces of white chicken. What, no cantaloupe? Geeezus christ.

The end of the story: The next day they fixed my car for exactly the amount they quoted me and I am now able to drive to my destinations worry-free...although I'm still wearing a baseball cap.