The problem with bumpin' to hard core rap

...is that it's hard to hear your car's engine coughing politely to warn you of its impending death. Instead, this: you, in heels and work attire, straining in all your sudden white girliness to push this dead, smoking car out of the intersection. A nice old Mexican man nudges your (possibly flaming) car to safety, and you are now free to walk the six miles home in 99 degree heat (and your stupid, stupid heels) because you've left your cell phone on the kitchen table to be batted around and eventually hidden under the dryer by your kitten. It's weird to wander through neiborhoods with street names like "Lemon Pass" and "Merrywood" with cop killer lyrics cycling through your tired brain.

This, after a day of teaching community college English, where 19 good students can be outweighed by one surly one, scowling through too much eyeliner and muttering under her breath because I dared to suggest the class might be easier if she showed up more often.

Today's status check:

* My name is "Miss," and I am either "pretty cool" or "a total bitch" depending on which student you ask.

* My feet are so blistered they look like they should belong to a pox-ridden 18th century peasant.

* My car, my otherwise obsessively maintained car, may be, as they say down here, "completamente chingado." Considering my financial situation right now, this is cause for immediate, butt-clenching panic.

The upside of all this is that I have someone I can come home to, someone who gets to witness my sweaty, snivelly recounting of events, and who will respond with, "Oh holy shit, honey, I'm so sorry." I can't express how nice it is to be pitiful and five years old again, pointing out blisters and a sunburn, even if only for two minutes. It makes getting down to the business of calling auto parts dealers and service garages much easier.

One thing, though-- I am now complying, totally against my will, with the president's call for less driving. The nerve of that guy. Do nothing to raise fuel economy standards, threaten to plunder protected lands in Alaska for more oil, bungle your way into a war to protect our over-reliance on foreign oil, and then, only after God Himself starts taking hurricane pot shots at your refineries, do you start asking Americans to put down the gas pump. Well, if you say so, George...

Update: so I ordered a new radiator (they're surprisingly light!) from a guy named Rocky, and went to pick it up after another fairly OK day at work, which ended with a long conversation with a Kinesiology major. This guy had Down's Syndrome, but he was honestly one of the best conversationalists I've met in a long time. His knowledge of movie stars and professional football was staggering, and he said halfway through the conversation, genuinely embarassed, "I'm sorry-- we've been talking all this time and I haven't asked your name. How rude!" Very Cary Grant. I was sad to have to leave him when my husband came to pick me up, which is unusual for me with strangers, as I've become pretty guarded in my old age.

So now a guy named Troy, with the bedside manner of a good surgeon, has my car and promises to investigate all the things Google told me to worry about. Troy got my business because he was one of the few mechanics who would deign to speak to a woman and without talking down to her. I found him after two different businesses explained slowly to me that you do actually have to get someone to change the oil in a car periodically. "I know," I said, "I do my own oil changes. That's not what I'm asking about." Then the conversation went one of two ways: either I didn't change the oil correctly, silly girl, or I was a bull dyke and treated with hostility. I hate it when people live up to my lowest expectations. But Troy-- good human, gets my business.

Completely unrelated note: my dog, Abby, a hyper-intelligent Australian Shepard with a pulled muscle in her back leg (meaning, she's missing out on her daily 500 yard tears around the field behind our house) is slowly going mad and taking it out on the kitten, Linus. Linus is a hurricane refugee who my husband found under a porch in Pensacola, and who has turned into an exceptional little cat-- he sleeps in the sink, doesn't mind playing in water, wrestles with the dog, and is somehow hopelessly devoted to me even though I started out disliking him because I had a decades-old policy of hating cats. He follows me eveywhere and hides in my discarded pants. Abby and Linus are rolling through this room like furry, kinetic tumbleweed, stopping only when Linus has to take a breather by hiding behind my bookshelf full of reference books.

Downstairs, my husband is opening a beer and quoting lines from "Caddyshack." This is the equivalent, for me, of opening a can of cat food-- it will call me out of the darkest of corners, ears perked up, without even knowing why I'm drawn to it...