Lemonade

When life hands you lemons, don’t you sometimes want to shove those lemons down someone’s throat and walk away? With no guilt or conflict of morality or ethics getting in the way?

I get that I’m supposed to be all kinds of positive about when shit happens, because, shit happens.   It just does.  In the order of the world, there has to be a balance of good and bad, and I guess life was getting too good (although, I’d like to ask the universe: can life ever be too good? Really?  Are we sure about that answer?)  And as my uncle told me so kindly earlier this week, “you had a yang coming with that steady flow of yin…”   Yeah, yeah.  Whatever.

Earlier this week I was jolted out of my precious slumber by the sound of a horrendous crash outside of my window.  Hazily leaping out of bed to the window, I looked down to find that another car had indeed crashed into MY car.  Out of the 30 she had to choose from on our block, mine was her victim.  Well, mine and two others.  But mine not only got hit, it got CRUNCHED.  And mine was the last one she hit, thus receiving the biggest blow.  And I parked under the street lamp the night before, because I had come in late, and so the street lamp had also aided and abetted in the crunching of the OTHER side of my car.  Epic crunching.

Due to the fact that it was 5:45 am, I was all kinds of confused and disoriented and didn’t quite understand the extent to which I had just been handed lemons.  Smiling, and still trying to wake up my brain, I didn’t think to be outraged or hostile.  I didn’t think to challenge the police when they failed to provide me with any of the driver’s information.  I didn’t think to ask for her driver’s license number.  This was all promised to be in the police report—the police report I would be able to claim in 5-10 days for a cost of $10.  I didn’t think this was outrageous.

Now, almost four days later, my hostility is setting in.  Especially now that the young girl, driving alone on a learner's permit at 5:45 am, is MIA, her insurance plan was cancelled months ago, and the police appear to have “lost” parts of the police report (the only document that contained her information that we need in order to seek justice), I’ve poured the lemonade down the drain.

The lemonade is gone.  I’m looking at a preliminary (I repeat, preliminary) damage report that rounds in at about $6,500 worth of body work (thank god for comprehensive collision insurance).  I’m trying hard not to get hustled by the “industry” that is car insurance and collision repair.  And I find myself totally overwhelmed with it all.  I’m wondering if my car will be totaled—something NO ONE seems to want to tell me—and I’m also wondering if it means I’m gonna have to buy a new car this week (and if so, what do I buy?  Can I even afford a new car?)  I’m driving a crappy rental car that drives like a sewing machine on wheels that smells like ass covered up with air freshener.  And I’m preparing myself for this to go on for another couple of weeks until official decisions are made and repairs can be done (or not).

I’m wondering if this girl, now being hassled by my insurance company and my neighbor’s insurance agencies, is even going to face ANY penalties.  It doesn’t appear that we have any kind of grip whatsoever on the situation, thank you very much Baltimore city police who wanted to rush cleaning up the scene/writing the report so that they could end their shift. 

And everyone keeps saying: Look at the bright side, you weren’t in the vehicle.  No one got hurt.

What the fuck is up with everyone’s love for lemonade?  I know y’all aren’t this positive on a regular basis.  This is why I live on the East Coast.  I live for our perpetual cynicism and negativity.  Live for it.  Please, for the love of god someone say something snarky.

The only thing that has kept me together this week has been the overwhelming amount of anxiety I have about all the homework I have left to finish before my last two classes of grad school this semester.  I fear that come Tuesday morning, I might just dissolve into a big mess in the carpet and poor Cara (patient plutonic wife and roommate that she is) is gonna need to scoop me up and put me in front of a marathon of Always Sunny in Philadelphia with some Red-Hot Cheetos.  And possibly a Quaalude and a vodka tonic.

I got a feeling it won't be pretty, folks.

So thus far, my solution for today has been to bake a cake and to read some scholarly journals (that by noon I need to have synthesized into a well-thought out thesis).  By 7:30 this morning, I was highlighting to the sexy hum of my stand-up mixer, faithfully beating the shit out of some cake batter.  Using my beautiful, shiny, red KitchenAid mixer is like the equivalent of getting high.  It’s totally my heroin.  I also have plans to go buy some plants today and to get my little organic urban garden bloomin'—plans I had last weekend but ended up botching thanks to cold natty boh's and a really, really hot sunshine.

Today, I will blissfully ignore the fucking lemons.  I will NOT look at new cars online (which gives me anxiety).  I will NOT look at my 8 page preliminary estimate from the body shop (which gives me anxiety).  I will NOT call my insurance company or check my online claim for any details (which gives me anxiety).  Today I will do my homework.  And maybe throw on a shirt-dress, some high heels, and some red lipstick.  And maybe I’ll vacuum.  Or make a soufflé from scratch.

Here’s hoping a healthy dose of domesticity (and intellectual discourse) will brighten up my weekend.  But don’t expect lemonade if you drop in.  We’ll be serving bourbon, only.  And no more positivity, people.  It's making me nauseous.