car woes

So I have been getting hassled for over a year now (mostly by my mom and matt) to take my car in because it has been making a noise in the back. I have been resisting taking my car in because it has been making the noise for about 3 years and has yet to break down on me and I didn't want to shell out a bunch of money that you ALWAYS end up spending every time you take your car in to get checked. Matt had a few days off this week and, despite my protests, made an appointment to take my car in. (although when we got married I did assign him all "car" responsibilities such as telling me when I have to get an oil change, tires rotated, car registration, etc because I HATE doing that kind of stuff and if something bad happens to the car I can blame him. However, I must say that overall Matt has not done that good of job as I got a ticket for having expired tags...which I blamed on him). So we took the car in and of course the mechanic calls us and starts speaking the foreign language of "shop talk" that nobody understands and just makes you get really nervous and feel uncomfortable and a little sweaty. Then they start naming off parts you never knew your car had, like a "spider valve" and how it is on the verge of exploding and your car will burst into a flame if you drive it another mile. So of course you tell them to fix the problem, no matter the cost, because you are not idiotic enough to put your family in danger.

So long story short, about 2 days and TWELVE HUNDRED DOLLARS later, I got my car back. And you know what? It drives and looks the same as it did before (I guess minus a slight noise in the back which I personally thought helped lull Chase to sleep, so in fact I got my car back in worse shape in my opinion.) Then I spent the rest of the night pondering all the other things I could have spent the $1,200 on (not that I ever would spend it on these things all at once per se, but it is the principle) like 10 pairs of designer jeans, or 20 pairs of shoes, or go to the movie theater 100 times, or get 1,700 42 ounce diet cokes at McDonalds (they currently have 42 ounce drinks for 69 cents!). You get my point.

UPDATE: for those of you who care to join in the pity party I am throwing for myself I have a car update. So I get in my car today to drive it for the first time since I got it back and whaddya know...it won't start!! So I have to get it towed back to the mechanic where apparently there is a new problem totally unrelated to the $1,200 problem that was just "fixed". INTERESTING. Interesting that I have had this car for 5 years with no problems. hmmmm.... I think it is a conspiracy.

And for those of you who are interested in the "envelope" comment posted, when I was living in Provo with Holly and Valerie we were intrigued by the envelope stuffing "job" that you could do from home. Supposedly, you were paid $2 for every envelope stuffed!! We could not believe how rich this would make us (rich in college student terms that is) and started referring to everything we had to buy in terms of how many envelopes we would have to stuff. Example: buy a burger: that would cost 2 envelopes, buy a shirt: that would cost about 10 envelopes. You can imagine our SHOCK when we sent in to get started on making our fortune and never heard back from them after they took our $5 (and by "our" I really mean Holly's because I was a little skeptical). Probably for the better. Who knows if I would have ever bothered finishing college if the envelope thing had worked out.