From Bummer to Brightener

Last night, in leaving work in the glorious darkness, the security gates and I had an altercation, which I lost, and the gates punished me by clipping off both my car mirrors. Fortunately, the kind police officer who watches over my office building cordially ambled outside with me and helped me remove the mirror housing and save the wires, holding them in place by rolling the windows up against them gently. He also took a police report. In doing it, he pointed out the huge dent in my bumper and asked if the gate did that, too. I told him no, I gave the car its character four years ago by backing into a tree with a great deal of zest. I never repaired it because the dent makes it easy to pick out my car from among the zillions of compact silver cars in any parking lot.

Report and preliminary repairs accomplished, I drove my poor mirrorless car (sort of like a person losing his/her ears) home to rest overnight while Donnie and I decided what to do next, the complication being that we have only one car, I work 30 miles away, and I had a very important meeting to attend in the early afternoon. Another complication is the $1000 deductible we have, meaning that the repairs would have to be paid from my purse. Who wants to bleed out hundreds of dollars right before Christmas?

After sleeping on it, in the morning we decided to take our ear-less car to Firestone for repairs since we use Firestone for routine things, and the manager there is always helpful, honest, and keeps repairs as inexpensive as possible. There, things went very smoothly, and Firestone will have new "ears" on my car tomorrow. Even better, Firestone is giving us 10% off and 6 months to pay with no interest -- because I let them talk me into giving me one of the credit cards. Like I need another credit card! However, it does take the sting out of the $600 fix-it price tag and saves our Christmas fund. That seemed like a bit of divine intervention.

For today, I rented a neat Nissan because I could not claim sick leave for a car's ear trouble. The rental car company picked Donnie and me up at Firestone and drove us to its office, where I picked out the cute little Nissan. The Nissan drove beautifully, and I never enjoyed mirrors quite so much before. And so I returned to my office ready to dare those gates to touch this one!

Ain't life grand?!