My car - under siege!

Usually my car is no trouble at all. It's a 2005 Scion, and until last week, it had never been repaired except for the few bits of body work when bad drivers hit my parked car ( I park in a garage, so that's more often than I'd like). In fact, that happened again a few weeks ago, and annoying as that it, at least the driver not only left her insurance, but called the Tulane police and filed a report herself. All well and good: a pain, but at least I'm not paying. But then a few days later, it wouldn't start. That was bad, because the battery is only a year old. David had vacuumed it earlier though, so I thought maybe he'd left the inside light on. We jumped it, I went to work, no biggie. Next, I headed to the grocery store, where I bought some beautiful shrimp... that leaked all over my boot. My car stinks now - despite multiple carpet shampoos and febreezing.

At this point, I was beginning to think my car was jinxed. What happened next persuaded me that it was: I heard a tow truck on the street, and ran out to see my car ticketed and hooked up to tow! David ran out and persuaded the driver to let him just move the car. To our baffled questions, the driver explained that someone had called to report that I was parked closer than three feet from his driveway. In other words, our NEIGHBOR called and asked for a tow rather than knocking on my door! Further, I was quite far from the drive, I thought - but the tow truck driver told me that I was "two feet, ten inches"! To add insult to injury, the driveway isn't really a driveway. It's half a driveway, and half an alleyway full of gas pipes and protected by large, yellow cement posts. So totally not parking space. And I was "too close" to that side. So my neighbor is a jerk, basically.

But were my car woes over? No. Not at all. That weekend, I picked up a nail in my tire. And while David gingerly drove it, he realized that it was pulling hard right. Whether or not this was related to the hit ( still unrepaired), we weren't sure, but when we brought it in to have the tire patched, we had an alignment done, too. That was my very first repair on this car, and it fixed the problem.

But in one last gesture of defiance, my car refused to start the very next morning. Annoyed, I hopped in the car with David and we car-pooled, since that would be faster than getting out the cables and jumping it. We got to work, and I grabbed the door handle... and snapped it in half. I actually broke the handle in two.

Apparently I have it out for these cars!