I moved out

Out of my Jeep that is. The ironies in this story are numerous.

I was on my way home from work last night. I'd stopped to pick up pizzas for dinner and was traveling back home via my usual route. I'm sure I'm one of the only people who ever finds their mind wandering on the drive home after a long day of work. I'm not saying I drive on auto-pilot, but some might contend that I do. Anyway, I passed a car lot on my way home and noticed it looked like it was closed. This led to my thinking of how much I like my Jeep and how it's been such a good car for me (after enduring a volatile 2-year long relationship with a VW Passat that I finally had the courage to end last spring). No major car repairs in over a year was a nice break from what had been the norm before.

Not 10 minutes later, I looked down at the dash and saw the RPM needle rapidly moving back and forth, felt the Jeep losing power, saw the check engine light on and noticed a suspicious smell wafting in through the open window. Irony #1.

I pulled over to the narrow shoulder, barely making it out of the way of the 5:00 traffic before the car died. My dad always gets the first call in any situation like this. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed home. As I thought about where to have the vehicle towed, I realized I had just driven by the repair shop of choice. Irony #2. If I had but known that in 2 minutes and 1/8th of a mile I would be needing a tow I could have saved the call to AAA for roadside assistance and just dropped the car off. But, alas, no use crying over spilled milk.

After talking for a few minutes with my dad and figuring out the course of action to be taken, he said, "Call me back and let me know what's going on, 'cause I'll probably have someone come get the pizzas." Um...HELLO?! What about ME??? Irony #3.

My brother came to my rescue, picking up both me AND the pizzas...
AND my backpack...AND my collection of CDs that slowly but surely moved from my room to my car...AND my softball gear...AND my tennis racket. Irony #4. Apparently it takes breaking down on the side of the road for me to clean the junk out of my car.

This morning, I received a call from the repair shop. Two sensors gone bad confusing the computer. I'd prepared myself for much worse than this. I felt like I was going to get off easy when I heard it was ONLY going to be $340.00 for the diagnostics and the repairs. Okay, I can deal with that. AND they would have the car ready for me to pick up this evening. Even sweeter. Call #2 from the repair shop informed me that I would HAVE to replace the spark plugs, as well. A mere $120 additional. Not the greatest news, but okay. I can still handle it. AND it will still be ready this evening. Call #3 from the repair shop came at 4:00 PM:

"Hello?"
-Me

"Um, yeah, Jaymie? Tom over here at the repair shop. These are the calls that I hate to make." Not a good start, Tom. "Unfortunately, these calls have to be made sometimes and you get to be it today. And everything else had been going really well today."

Irony #5. Lucky me.