My poor, sweet baby isn’t feeling too well…. er, my truck’s done broke.

It has been getting worse and worse over the last couple of weeks, and as of Friday night, it had all of the get up and go of a 90-year-old lady on a walker. On ice. With a broken hip. The check engine light had finally come on (I seem to have a love-hate relationship with Dodges and check engine lights) so now it’s possible to diagnose that puppy, I hope.

When I was getting nervous about it, I set up an appointment with the racing truck kid. I figured that while I was there, I’d get those guages put in that I really need. But on reconsideration (and a poke in the ass from Murphy), I just took it over to my mechanic this morning. It might be a regular problem, not an aftermarket-parts issue, and even if it is, this is the guy who put those parts on.

So Marv drove over with me and brought me home, and I stopped to rent a car.

A small car, since I’m paying for it out of my very own pocket and I’m fundamentally cheap.

This model comes equipped standard with fourteen clowns and a dancing poodle in a tutu, but the tootely horn honking was getting distracting and I kept getting thwacked in the head with big floppy shoes, so I pulled over and let them out. Took fifteen minutes, and I’m pretty sure there’s still a red rubber nose rolling around on the back floorboards.

I tell you what, driving any kind of car is always a little startling for me, but this one is even smaller than usual. I’m real up close and personal with the roadkill, if you know what I mean (and I think you do.) Man, that skunk needed a toenail trim. I was sitting at a stoplight next to a truck much like mine, and realized that my head was below that driver’s ass. I can see the undercarriage of a Ford Focus. But I’ll be safe if I happen to get in a wreck with a big rig; I’ll slip right under, won’t even mess up my hair.

The whole office is giggling at my tiny car. Ralph made an illustration. Note the knees up beneath my chin, which is a life-like depiction (the hair, not so much.) I’m an average-sized woman, and I’m uncomfortably crammed in this wee beastie.

::postus interruptus::

Aaaannd, I’m back. While I was writing, the mechanic called. Seems that my truck is too new for his computer to work, so he couldn’t pull the code to find out what exactly was wrong with it. And Dodge won’t sell the new computers, preferring to hog all of the repair work to themselves. So I went to pick it up, trading in the clown car, which will hang out in their shop tonight. Tomorrow morning, it’s off to the stealership, where I’ll pay them to pull the code and diagnose it, but not to actually touch anything. They don’t do a very good job and they charge way too much. Then it’s back out to Newman to play musical vehicles again and hope that my mechanic can get it fixed before I have to pay for another day on the rental.

But just to cap off my day, I stopped in at Marci’s to say hello while I was there. I zipped off when we’d chatted for a while (like we don’t talk all day long.) Got into my driveway, which happens to be 45 minutes away, and noticed that I had no purse. Guess where that was? And no, I couldn’t just get it tomorrow; not if I’m going to pay the stealership. So back out to Newman I went, in a truck that’s living on borrowed time. I passed that skunk six times today (he’s starting to ooze) and I get to do it two more times tomorrow and then whenever I get to pick it up.

I feel like one of those slidey puzzles, with pieces negotiating truck and fixed points like meetings at work. I can only hope that the picture at the end is of me with a hot-rod pickup, and not something completely pointless, like puppies in a shoe. If that’s the case, I’m trading it all in on a Harley and running away from home.