New Things: car edition (#114-118)

New Thing #114: I just cleaned out the trunk of my car for the first time since I got the dang Toyota Camry in 1999 ("clean out trunk" has been on my To Do List since August of 2000), just in time to give the shell of my dead car to charity so that they can hopefully sell the parts or whatever they're planning on doing with it.

New Thing #115: I donated my dead Toyota Camry (goodbye Camry smell) to the American Cancer Society.

New Thing #116: I got a new (used) car: a 2000 Toyota Corolla (with 40,000 miles on it) (awesome) (totally functional) (NO FRILLS) (like, it doesn't even have a "pop the trunk" switch) (it has a tape deck for cryin' out loud) (but hello, bright side: that means the box of old mix tapes I found in my trunk might actually get some play again!).

New Thing #117: a new attitude: I will not treat my car like it is a second home, or a storage facility, or like my trunk is where things go to die long horrible thing deaths before I can finally accept that I don't want them anymore and I should have just gotten rid of them rather than shoved them into my trunk with all of the other crap I don't really need or want anymore but which I haven't allowed myself to let go of because I am a fucking pack rat (even though my pack rat nature is rewarded by things like the fact that I stowed away a box of old mix tapes in the trunk of my car for seven years and then when my car died a terrible death I got a new car that miraculously had a tape deck wherein which I can play these wonderful old mix tapes).

New Thing #118: I totally forgot to blog about this a couple of weeks ago--or, I was planning on writing a long post about all of the car maladies I've been through and I just never got around to it--and then I was writing this "car edition" post and remembered, "oh, yeah, I never fucking wrote about that thing I did with my car for the first time ever a couple of weeks ago." And what is that New Thing? I freaking locked myself out of my car WHILE THE CAR WAS STILL RUNNING. I had been listening to Regina Spektor on my ipod and I was so into the song (she was singing "Poor Little Rich Boy" and I was singing along with her and I was fucking so into it) that I got out of the car, slammed the door (and locking it as I did so), walked up to my front door (still crooning the fuck away), and then realized that I didn't have my keys. Whoops. So I walked back to the car (stilling singing) (obviously I meant to type "still singing" just now and not "stilling singing" but don't you think there's something poetic about the phrase "stilling singing"?) (like, I really want it to mean something) and then when I got back to the car, I was like "oh my god it's fucking locked" and that's when I realized "oh my god it's fucking running too." Even though Triple A promised me they would put a rush on my call (since my car was running), it took them an hour and twenty minutes to show up, which was weird because usually Triple A is much quicker (and I should know because I use them, like, ten times a year) (I really should invest in one of those hideaway key thingies) (and seeing as I've locked myself out of my car literally dozens of times, I'm kinda surprised this was the first time I did it with my car running) (it wasn't moving obviously, it was just on) (but wouldn't that have been something if it was moving?) (there was this one time I parked my car on a slight hill and got out of the car and then it started rolling down the hill because I had forgotten to put it in park and I had to run with the car and literally unlock the car while I was running with the car as it gained acceleration down the [thankfully slight] hill and then I got the door open and jumped into the moving car like I was a Duke of Hazzard and pulled on the emergency break to finally stop the damn thing)

(and then of course there was the time where I parked old Mercury Topaz on Los Feliz Blvd. This was back when my friend Tina Poppy lived on Los Feliz Blvd. I parked the Topaz outside her place, about a block west of her place actually. [remember, Los Feliz Blvd. is on an incline--that's an important thing to know for later in the story.] [this was one of the first days of September, 1997--a couple of days after Princess Diana was killed--that's also an important thing to know for later in the story.] I parked my Topaz and went into Tina's place, where she had made dinner for us before we planned on going to see that Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel with Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConahoweveryouspellit and we were probably in her apartment for about 45 minutes or so, and then we headed out to go to the movies and we were walking up her street to where I had parked my car...but the car wasn't where I remembered parking it. That's weird, we thought. So we kept walking up the street, thinking maybe I'd parked it farther up than I remembered. But it wasn't there. And that's when we kinda became aware of the massive traffic jam. And that's when we looked down the street, down the hill, towards the fountain. And that's when we saw my beautiful shit-brown Mercury Topaz at the bottom of the hill, embedded into a parked car and completely obstructing the far eastbound lane of traffic. [I still thank god that that car didn't hit or kill anyone as it made its way across all 6 lanes of Los Feliz Blvd.] [the fact that it didn't kill anyone is seriously proof of the existence of God] [because if you haven't ever been on Los Feliz Blvd. then you should know that Los Feliz Blvd. is ALWAYS teeming with cars.] [it must have looked like a wicked game of Frogger as my car made it's way across those six lanes of what I'm sure was a sea of moving vehicles.] Anyway, we were mortified and hella scared and freaked out at the sight of my car embedded in this other car at the bottom of the hill. There were so many cars out that I couldn't even jaywalk across the street to get to my car. I had to run a block up to the crosswalk, wait for the light to change, run across the street, and then run down the hill, where the owner of the parked car I had hit was standing, her face frozen in a state of shock. "I just came out," she told me. "I'm sorry," I said. "You didn't put your car in park." "I know, I'm sorry," I told her, again. "I just came out, I haven't even called the police yet," she told me. I got into my car, turned on the ignition and moved my car to a safer parking spot down the hill, then I went back to the woman whose car I hit. And then she said what is perhaps the funniest, weirdest, saddest thing anyone has ever said to me. [Remember: this was in September of 1997, a couple of days after Princess Diana was killed.] This woman looked at me and she said, "I just found out about Princess Di...and now this." And then she burst into tears.)