One-way ticket to Weirdsville

This morning, right before MB got me up for the day, I dreamed that a friend was on her way to the hospital to have a baby. About three hours later, I opened my email at work to find a message from the same friend, announcing that she is 9 weeks pregnant. ((CONGRATULATIONS!!!)) If I tell you that this was one of the more normal things that happened to me since then, you may begin to understand how bizarre today was.

Work was pretty normal. (If only I'd waited until today to call the guy in LA about borrowing a taxidermied sloth for a display I'm planning...but I did that last week.) I left at 5:00, as usual, planning to hit the library on the way home, go to the grocery with MB, and then spend the evening catching up on my blog reading, doing laundry, and cleaning up the apartment.

I put the key into the ignition, turned it, and listened as the starter went rrrrrun rrrrun rrrrrrun a few times and did nothing else. There was a clunk so loud I actually felt something in the engine drop, and that's all she wrote. After that, there was nothing, not even enough battery to use the power locks. I called MB and called triple A, MB arrived like a slightly flustered knight in shining armor to help me transfer the recycling bin and my stuff to his car, and then we waited for the tow truck to arrive. And really, truly, MB was fab. He put aside all his own Very Important Plans for the evening to rescue me, and barely complained at all. Plus, he didn't napalm my car, and I know he wanted to, so badly. You see, the love I feel for my car is equaled only by the hate that MB feels for it. And yet, he did not do any firebombing. Thanks, babe! You're the best! Smooches!

When the tow truck arrived, we told the driver we'd follow him to the Garage of Choice, and after he loaded my poor pitiful car onto his flatbed, he said, "See ya'll at the Garage of Choice." In hindsight, it was rather foolish of us to believe him, but we didn't yet realize how weird the night was going to get.

We followed the tow truck for a few blocks, and then he suddenly and inexplicably veered off down a side street that in no way, shape, or form could lead him to the Garage of Choice. We wondered aloud why he'd pulled off, figured maybe he'd needed to adjust a chain or something, and proceeded somewhat naively to the Garage of Choice. About half an hour later, I called my mom so she could look up the tow truck company's number and find out where the guy was. The dispatcher said he'd stopped off to get another car along the way. What the hell? At least we weren't paying him by the hour or anything, but he might've mentioned that he'd be making a detour and basically ditching us.

He arrived a few minutes later, and immediately we noticed that my poor car had been booted off the flatbed. In her place, a new shiny green pickup was looking a little too smug for my liking, while my homelier but way more charming car had to be pulled behind. Honestly the guy was nice, but it made for some fun righteous indignation while I got to be a little offended (not to his face) about my car getting no respect.

We decided to head to Backyard Burgers to get something to eat while we waited for the garage to call, only to drive over there and find that Backyard Burgers was closed. There were some lights on inside, but there were hand-scrawled "CLOSED" signs taped to the doors and drive-thru windows. Odd. We went to Culver's instead, hit the grocery for supplies, and went to pick up some books I had on hold at the library. When we got to our apartment, there was this skinny, slightly stoned-looking guy hanging out in our parking lot. He (of course) approached us and asked if we had a lighter and if we knew how far it was to Owensboro. I gave him the lighter that I inexplicably found in between the cushions of the couch a few weeks ago, and before I knew it he was using MB's cell phone and we were giving him a cup of juice, and I was hovering around the door trying to look menacing while MB chatted with the guy on the front steps. There's nothing like watering the plants cleaning your nails with a switchblade knife to show somebody that they better not fuck with your famiglia, man, or they're gonna be sorry.

Turned out he was, like MB, from Kentucky. He apparently got to the Greyhound station only to find that his ride was not there, and then wandered around for God knows how long until he stumbled across us. Now, this sort of situation is what J-Dog's husband Nick so aptly calls a "karma test" (for both him and us, really). I was wishing the guy would just leave already (without MB's cell phone), and MB was wondering if we should offer the guy a ride to Owensboro. When MB came in and told me he was giving the guy a ride to a gas station a few miles from our place, and he told me, "It's good karma," I suddenly wondered if I made a mistake lecturing him about doing something nice for good karma so many times. Stupid hippie!

Anyhow, the guy really did seem decent enough. He had phoned his mother, who was going to send his stepfather to pick him up at the only landmark in town he knew, the gas station a few miles away. I rode along and kept my phone in hand just in case things didn't seem right. As we were waiting to turn onto the highway, I saw a guy on a crotch-rocket motorcycle wearing skintight red leggings, ladies' platform boots, and what looked in the dim streetlights to be a red print jacket with a fur ruff. As we turned left past him, I saw that the jacket was actually a red and black plaid lumberjack affair with a tan hood liner. But still. It was a big bald guy in a lumberjack coat, ladies' boots, and skintight red leggings. On a crotch-rocket motorcycle.

We dropped off the non-scary non-psychotic Kentucky kid, doing a load of good for our karma, then headed to my parents' house so I could borrow my sister's car--a big, plodding, somehow elegant blue Buick Skylark that my parents bought cheap from my dad's mom a few years ago on the mistaken assumption that my sister would be getting her license sometime soon. It's basically my car in blue--biggish, oldish, lots of character, and a certain grandma-car charm (my car was originally Mom's mom's). Now, I'll have to drive her for a few days before I know for sure, but my sister's car doesn't seem to have the sass that mine does. I think she's a Betty. Big Betty, maybe. Or Blue Betty.

It was sort of a perfect end to a weird alternate-reality kind of day--driving home in a car that was almost exactly like my car except totally not my car at all, watching out for crotch-rocket-riding cross-dressers.



(And I'm totally not kidding about the cross-dresser. Or the sloth.)