What Kind of Week Has It Been

Last Saturday I was driving while working my newest/greatest-ever!/unpaid gig to get a free lunch when I put my car into reverse on a richy rich Bee Caves street. Something happened that had occurred two months ago: the car became stuck in reverse, and the clutch became limp. No matter where I moved the stick the car stayed in reverse. When this had happened last time, it was because a pin attaching the clutch to the transmission had broke.

Luckily, this time, I was only two blocks away from a Shell service station. "Well, it's Saturday, and our weekday people aren't here," the Shell mechanic said. "And it ain't like we can go your car to look at it; we still gotta have it here."

Some time after I'd called a tow truck to take it somewhere else, I estimated in my head, based on how much it'd cost last time to fix, that, even though this was a relatively cheap fix, I didn't have enough money in the bank for a tow truck and labor.

I got on the phone with the tow truck people. "You said you'd be here 45 minutes ago! You're 20 minutes late!"

"Our guy says he's pulling up now."

"Yeah, well," I said, "I'll take care of it myself." And so I drove it to the service station. In reverse.

I took the bus cross-town yesterday to pick up the car. They told me my clutch is going out, which is a job arguably more expensive than the car has become. Also, the job ended up costing twice my estimate. And, because of (in my estimation) shoddy repair work, my car frequently won't go into reverse, second, or fourth gear now.

And let's not forget: Because the job ended up costing twice what I'd expected, I don't have enough for rent this month.

Remember my wacky bullshit handicap parking ticket, the one I was given in an empty parking lot after midnight at my place of work where I'd been given permission to park? I'd went in to contest it a few weeks ago, waited an hour only to find that I was just there to request a court date; they said they'd mail said date to me. After not having gotten any mail for the last week, I came home and found a stack in the kitchen, hidden by my roommates. On the stack was a letter from City of Austin.

It was a delinquent notice for not having paid the ticket.

Not only that, but through some filing error City of Austin put in two different citations for the same offense. Thus, the bill says I owe $550 for a parking ticket.

That's just the financial stuff. There's like fifteen billion little things that are attacking my manic depression, of which, I probably couldn't articulate, but are just as effectively making the shit-whole greater than the sum of its parts. Some weeks I feel like I'm living the origin of a supervillain.

Recently Read:
Orlando by Virginia Woolf, The Devil's Guide to Hollywood by Joe Eszterhas