That’s it, my car is toast. I think. It was worst this morning. Today has just been a shitty day, and the car thing just didn’t help at all. I got up this morning next to my angel, and OK, that wasn’t shitty. I decided what to wear (limited by the dwindling number of things that fit me that I can be warm in and wear to work), got dressed, and went down to the car and…it’s covered in ice. Shit. The sprinkler system for the complex is Right. By. The. Parking Lot. So there’s frozen matted grass, and a frozen Mitsubishi. Sure, it’s December, but it’s Texas, people. There’s no ice in Texas, not till January! Well, no icy precip, we’ll put it that way. So I scrapescraped until I could almost see hazy outlines of stuff out the window, and the car stalled right there in the parking lot, and I wasn’t even driving it.

Panicpanicpanic.

I restarted the car and it made some loud uncomfortable noises, but at this job if I am late 5 minutes, I get written up, and I know how this company is. So I started driving through the parking lot, spilling my DP on the floor because I was trying too hard to turn on the windshield wipers to clear away the futz of ice flakes that didn’t brush off so I could see so I didn’t hit anyone. Or thing. I didn’t get all the ice scraped off, but it wasn’t Oklahoma ice, it was water sprinkler ice, and thick only in patches, thin everywhere else. So I wait by the back gate to go out. And wait. Five seconds pass, and the gate doesn’t even twitch. An impatient acura, millmieters behind me, honks.

So I press the gate opener that Tony gave me this morning. The gate to the left opens, and the acura squeals its tires going around me to get out. I step on the gas, and in a delayed hop, my car bounces backward, then I proceed through the gate.

Halfway. Because the acura is still waiting for traffic to clear so he can get out. Asshole. I make it to the stop sign, all the while my car jerking and hopping slowly forward. Fucking not good. I can’t get an open stretch of road so I can test her true reaction to the gas pedal. I have to tap…brake…tap…brake…tap and the car makes funny revving, then choking, then stalling noises. I don’t know if its because it’s cold, there’s ice in the engine, what. WHAT’S GOING ON?!?

It’s my turn to turn right, and the car makes a revving noise, then, mid-turn, gets deathly silent. What? This is totally new, never happened even once. Beautiful. When I need her the most, at a crucial moment in my drive, she dies for the very first time. I restart the engine, while other cars are pulling out to cross the intersection, coming close to me, acting like they’re gonna hit me. I am really scared of what will happen next, in the middle of a major intersection, will it die completely and then I am stranded on the side of the road so close to work yet so far? I was already definitely late to work, and I hadn’t even made it to a major intersection.

The rest of the drive was uneventful, but tense. Some dragging, like an asthmatic racehorse, but nothing uncontrollable, oh, I don’t know, like stalling in traffic.

I repeated this whole dance after lunch on my way back to work, but this time there was a huge Chevy truck behind me going 45 MPH coming up behind me before the stopsign, threatening to rear-end me. I just laid on my horn and let my car jerk itself forward. I’m not taking it from him, too, not today. Now I just have to make it to the mechanic’s after work, Ha. Ha. So I have to get Fei fixed, that’s all there is to it. Shit.