What a night.

After a long, grueling day at work, I finally signed out and booked out of here as fast as I could. There was only one problem though.

My car battery was dead.

When I came to work today, several news vans had parked (and doubled parked) in spaces I usually took, and since I was in a hurry, I turned on my hazard lights, doubled parked my car as well, and ran inside so I could sign in on time. I came back out again, found another parking space to stash my car, and yep, I forgot to turn off the hazard lights.

Mother@#$%.

I didn’t want to embarrass myself by asking around here for somebody to help jumpstart my car, so I called up roadside assistance, figuring it wouldn’t be a big deal for them to send somebody over to quickly get me up and running again.

Good grief, it was like I had called the DMV.

“What is your VIN number?”

“What is the make and model of your vehicle?”

“What is your call back number?”

“What is your current home address?”

“What is your work address?”

“What is the color of your vehicle?”

Color???? Who gives a crap what color it is?? Just send somebody over here to jumpstart it already so I can go home, dammit!!!!!!!!

FINALLY, the operator informed me that someone would shortly arrive and that I would get two automated calls to confirm the service truck’s arrival.

I get the first call: “Your service truck is estimated to arrive in one hour.”

Fortunately the guy came sooner than that. On my way out to greet him, I passed by a couple of young lawyers, a guy and a girl who worked out of our case assessment office. They were stepping out too but ignored me. The guy was built, clean cut, and nicely dressed in a sharp suit, and the girl of course was a gorgeous looking brunette. I looked at them and felt ashamed. I was in rags of a uniform, a 5 o’ clock shadow on my face, with sad, broken eyes whose fire had died out a long time ago. I looked at them for a long moment. Accomplished people. Happy people. Something I would never become, a life that I would never have. I quickened my pace to get away from them and headed up the street

The service guy was a friendly dude who arrived in a minivan. When he stepped out, I noticed he was missing some of his front teeth.

“Awww kay, ley me paww ze ood herr.”

“Uh, ok.”

A few minutes later my precious baby roared to life once again.

“Awwwkay! Yor awww goods zuu go.”

I thanked him, jumped in and floored it. I wanted to get home, crawl into bed, and get away from this weary life. To sleep and dream, and perhaps never wake up again.

I live on an apartment complex that assigns you one parking space per unit (which makes perfect sense since everybody and their mother around here owns at least two cars). Additionally, the town in its eternal wisdom has decreed that no car can be parked on any of the streets adjacent to the apartment complex for more than 4 hours. “F”-ing brilliant. Quite naturally as a result, parking has become a bit of an issue. When I first moved here, I figured I could pull a fast one when parking on the side streets by putting a police decal on my dashboard, indicating that I was on “official police business.” Since that’s what I actually use my car for when I’m working, it wasn’t really that far off the mark.

Nope, they ticketed my horse anyway. So much for camaraderie, fricking uptight code enforcement dweebs.

The funny thing however was that I managed to get the ticket torn up anyway, due to a long lost friend of mine working inside town hall. She had been my commanding officer back in the days when I was a reserve cop, and by sheer luck she was now working code enforcement. I found out months later that I wouldn’t be ticketed in the future, so long as they knew I was a resident of the area (kind of an unwritten rule they follow to cut residents some slack).

Before I found out about that though, there were times I parked my ride in front the dumpster used by the complex, along with three other cars that did the same thing. I really couldn’t blame them, because there simply was no other place to park, and I figured since they were doing it, no harm in me doing it too.

Nope. I got a letter from the landlord flatly stating how it has come to his attention that certain tenants (read: me) were illegally parking in front of the dumpster, and that if this continued, the cars (read: MY car) would be towed.

So I stopped parking there, though evidently I was the only one who got the memo because the other cars stayed right where they were. In fact another car now occupies the same spot I usually took in front of the dumpster. After asking around, it appears I really WAS the only one who got the letter. Hmmmm. So much for equal treatment.

To add insult to injury, when I’m parking on the side streets, one of the newer tenants has this habit of parking thisfrickingclose to my rear, even though there’s never anybody behind her, and there are always plenty of other spaces on the street where she could park much closer to her unit. This I don’t get, I mean if it were me, I think I’d park my ride a little bit closer than that, and definitely where I could actually see it from my apartment, right?

Today was different though. The car was parked in the same spot as always, except it was missing a few things. 4 tires to be exact. And the rims.

Whoever did it not only left the bolts but the jack behind as well. It was almost comical, but a little weird. For one, why was the car parked 2 feet from the curb, which inadvertently made it much easier for the thieves to jack and boost the tires from that side? And why leave the jack behind? The whole thing about it makes me suspect an insurance scam, especially since she didn’t seem overly upset about it when the police came knocking. I would have gone ape, but I guess that’s just me. I guess I’ll know for sure that something was up if she gets new tires, and then ends up parking in the exact same spot as usual.

Weird neighborhood I’m living in, but at least I won’t have to worry about Tire Lady parking up my ass for a while.