There are at least two ways to look at everything (and my higher power is laughing at me)

At least - there may even be three or four or five ways to look at the same situation.

I could be mad right now. Okay, I am mad right now. But I could have completely lost my mind and instead I am kind of sitting here laughing - laughing while mad and eating ice cream. A lot of ice cream. And I have to say - this is progress. It is - because a year ago - I would have lost my mind. I literally would have lost my mind. Two years ago - I'd be in the bar right now telling myself that I deserve a drink, or 2 or 7 - you know, because my life is so hard and shitty things happen to me.

My night - tonight, it was supposed to end in bubble bath and relaxing. Instead, my almost brand new fucking car, fucking died, while I was fucking driving down Halsted. An hour and a half and $220 dollars later, I am sitting at my house, seriously, laughing almost hysterically, while my car sits at the towing company waiting to be towed to the dealer. The towing guy probably ripped me off - I don't know how the hell much it is supposed to cost to tow a car in Chicago. But I had to pay to tow it twice because my dealer doesn't have night time drop off. Whatever.

Okay, as an initial matter - I will never drive a Volkswagen again, I will probably never drive an Audi or a Mercedes - cause I hate VW - and I make sure that every one I know, knows this. I make sure - I tell everyone. I tell everyone how horrible they have been to me. I have cursed these people out on multiple occasions - the dealer in Michigan, the dealer in Chicago, the company, their customer service people. I drive a brand new car - how many times has it broken? 10 at least. Thank God this is a lease and I get to give this piece of shit back. I've even threatened them under Michigan lemon law - I threatened them to the point where the customer service person told me he was no longer permitted to talk to me. I wrote them a letter - telling them I want a new fucking car and faxed it to the head of the company in Michigan. I have talked to just about everyone I can there - until finally some asshole told me there simply wasn't anyone else for me to talk to - he actually tried to tell me that there isn't anyone who handles these matters. There isn't anyone there who handles car defects and replacements? You don't have a designated person to talk to the crazy people who call threatening to sue you? Yeah fucking right asshole. Now I am on a mission and I'm pissed and I will make sure to make some one's life a living hell there until they replace my fucking car. No one here handles these matters my ass. We'll see about that, as I sue them under the lemon law. Watch me you mother fuckers. (Okay - so you all are getting a taste of how I really am, ha ha). Now you know why my "ex-husband" went away quietly when he asked me for money upon me telling him to get out...I said I dare you to fuck with me and promptly produced a spreadsheet of all the money he owed me.

Some might say that's not sober behavior - threatening the car company with lawsuits etc., but I don't care because now I'm mad and frankly, the way I see it - they do in fact owe me something. This is bullshit. IT'S A NEW FUCKING CAR. I have had more trouble with this car, than any piece of shit junker car I've ever driven. Now I am not just a little mad, I'm so mad that I'm not going to be able to sleep. What would my sponsor say - you are only harming yourself by being this angry - no one at the car company even knows (nor do they care frankly). Yeah well, you just wait. You just wait.

There are two ways to look at this though. I could be really mad, pissed about the $220 dollars that I didn't feel like throwing away, the inconvenience of not having a car to drive tomorrow or Monday (God forbid, right?), the annoyance of having to deal with it, and the inability to sleep.

Or, I could instead be grateful that when my car decided to die this evening, I was on Halsted, at a light - with relatively little traffic around me and no one behind me, in a well lit area with lots of people around. And that my car didn't die, while driving 80 down the expressway with traffic whizzing by me on all sides with no where to pull over - causing an accident - wrecking my car and injuring someone, possibly myself. And that I knew what to do - I called someone that I knew would answer, and she got me the number of a towing company, she even offered to go way out of her way to pick me up for the meeting in the morning we had planned to go to, the towing guy came 20 minutes later, meanwhile I talked to my sponsor while I waited and now here I am. See how that all worked out.

The reason God is laughing at me is this - this morning I was at the bank - I was moving money around so that I can pay a student loan off on Monday. The banking guy was talking to me about investing and we were talking about amounts - he said, well you could think about how much money you like to have on hand in case of emergency - you know in case your car breaks down or something like that. These are the words that came out of my mouth - oh, yeah, no, I drive a brand new car, I'm not worried about that, nothing will happen. How many times did I say this car has broken? 12 hours later, here we are. This is why I am sitting here laughing. Because it is just so fucking ironic.

You know what it is making me think - God is paying more attention than I thought. Maybe he or she is just bored up there and needed a laugh, you know, because I haven't done anything particularly stupid lately. In any event, I'm going to bite my tongue next time. People always say if you pray for patience - patience isn't what you get, you get presented with an opportunity to practice patience. I can't for the life of me figure out what the lesson is in this - what is my higher power trying to tell me here with such an irony?