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Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Broken window rollie uppie downie things

Apparently I am incapable of learning and apparently it is genetic.  Here is a recent conversation between my sister and mother:

     Shamayn: Jayson's gonna be gone a lot traveling to Houston, Aberdeen and then Houston and then home.
    Mom: Where's Aberdeen?
    Shamayn: I dunno.  Canada, I guess.


Bless their hearts.  Neither of them are stupid, they're just over 40 which is my excuse for the majority of my noticeable flaws.

Here's how stupid over 40 I am.  When Jayson left for Houston last week he wanted to take Taylor's car to "see how it handled on the highway".  She hasn't had it very long and certainly hasn't ventured out onto anything resembling a highway, so that was his excuse to get to drive the new car.

Taylor was fine with that as long as she got to drive my car for the 3 weeks Jayson will be test driving hers.  Jayson and I both drive 10 year old Durangos that are almost identical except for the color and the wear and tear.  Mine has more wear, his has more tear.  We tend to drive our cars until they literally become undriveable and only then will we consider replacing them.  My Durango is still in fairly decent shape and so is Jayson's thanks to some strategically placed duct tape.

One little inconvenience that both of our Durangos are experiencing is a broken window rollie uppie downie thing.  One day I was just driving along and one of the backseat windows fell down and couldn't get up.  Jayson pulled the window up and we wedged it into place with some scraps of rubber that I had lying around.  I rarely even think about not being able to roll that window down because I never sit in the backseat of my own car.  And if I did, I'm not the wind in your hair kind of gal and would never have a reason to roll the thing down unless the entire car was under water and I needed to escape.  In which case I'm betting the window rollie uppie downie thing wouldn't work anyway.

Shortly after my window mechanism died, one of Jayson's windows suffered the same fate.  Unfortunately for him, it was the driver's side window.  Also unfortunately for him, we used up all the good rubber scraps on my window so he was left with the duct tape option.  Not being able to roll down the driver's side window is a significant inconvenience but the duct tape that's holding his car together doesn't really bother Jayson.  I guess that's because he's a guy.  Or because after 20+ years of being married to me he has absolutely no sense of pride left.  I will stop traffic at a major intersection just to pick up a cool looking rusty bottle cap.  My face will glow with excitement as I carefully cradle the bottle cap in my hands and clutch it to my chest as if it was a 3 carat diamond.  I can see how that might take its toll after a while.

I've been driving the duct tape mobile with the inoperable driver's side window for approximately 10 days and during that time I have tried to go through the drive-through of the bank, Cane's, Starbuck's, Sonic and Taco Bell...twice.  What does this say about me, other than I eat too much fast food?  That's right. I am a moron with zero short term memory and incapable of learning my lesson through repeated mistakes.

This morning at Starbuck's was the last straw.  Their drive-through is a tiny single lane thing where once you pull in there's no graceful way to change your mind and pull out.  That wasn't an option anyway because I was at the caffeine or die stage.  I ripped the duct tape off the window placed my order, then wedged a little piece of paper between the glass and the weather stripping, hoping it would hold long enough for me to get to work where I could tape it back up.  Well, it didn't even make it from the ordering speaker to the pick-up window.

Now I'm left with the task of either taping the window back up like it was or covering the window opening with plastic.  I guess taping it back up would draw less attention than a big garbage sack flapping in the wind, but if the past is any indication I will just end up busting through it the next time I'm in a drive-through with a craving.  And there will be a next time since the fact that the window doesn't work seems to just slide off my Teflon brain.

Now I'm just wondering how many times it will rain inside the car before I remember that the window is down and I need to deal with it.  My guess is 4.

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