Cars and Monkeys

A few weeks ago, I got into an accident in my truck. So here are a few transportation and life related notes with no transitions in between because these are just random musings that I refuse to put into a coherent narrative.

1) I keep getting mail from chiropractors and massage therapists claiming that even though I feel fine right now, in a few months time I will get headaches and backaches and it will be the fault of the accident. Then it will be all my fault that I didn't receive acupuncture or a hot stone massage or whatever immediately after the accident when I am in agonizing pain (in two or three months). So. Since these "offers" of free massages and whatnot usually come in tacky orange envelopes with my name spelled hilariously wrong, I have a hard time taking them seriously.

Until I received well over a dozen of these mailers. Now I lie away at night wondering when the back pain is going to start.

2) While driving around the rental car for over two weeks, I learned a new fact. Cars are comfortable. You can lean the seats back and take a nap. You don't have to yell to have a conversation. You don't have to drive at 5 miles per hour when there is even the smallest hint of snow or ice on the ground. You can get more than three bags of groceries at a time because there is a trunk for the bags! Damn. Cars ARE convenient.

3) The rental had keyless operation, which has to be one of the greatest developments in car manufacturing in recent history. I had never heard of this feature, but grew to love it. Basically we were given a fob and told to keep it in our pockets. As long as the key was on our person, the car was operated by buttons. Push the button to start the car. Push the button on the handle to lock the car, open the car, and open the trunk. In the two weeks we had the rental, I never had to dig around in my purse or pocket for a key. I never needed the actual key!!

It raised lots of questions for us, of course. I have never had a vehicle with automatic anything. You guys, I still have to literally roll the windows down in my truck. So I know it's cheap to get my windows replaced and stuff, but what if this feature breaks? Does it cost a small fortune to fix? What if we accidentally left the fob in the car? Would we be able to get in the car again?

4) At some point, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law dropped their car off at our place and we drove them to the airport. They left us with about a quarter of a tank of gas in their car (let's call their car Gump). BB and I were under strict order to start the car every day that SIL and BIL were gone. At one point, Gump's gas light came on so we took him to the gas station and decided to put half a tank in. We thought we'd just put $20 in the tank and call it a day. At $19.60 the pump stopped. We had, inadvertently, filled the entire gas tank. Because putting $20 in Monster would be less than a quarter of a tank.

5) Our apartment complex, full of single folks and young married couples when we first moved in, has now morphed into an apartment complex full of small young families with squalling infants. The hallways smell like dirty diapers and there is always something screaming. It is the best form of birth control we have ever encountered.

6) The family next door must be a family of monkeys. The young child is forever screaming and the dad is forever yelling into the phone in a foreign language in the room directly next to our bedroom at 11:30 at night. I have actually had to sleep on the couch for two nights because he wouldn't shut the fuck up. I am so sick of the neighbors, I am tempted to kick them when I see them next.

7) When we first moved into this apartment, we swore we weren't going to move again within the city of Minneapolis. Recent developments in the state of our complex have made me seriously reconsider this attitude.