Rear Window

December is an expensive month at our house. Besides Christmas, we have birthdays to take care of, insurance premiums to pay and a variety of other stuff that sucks the money right out of our pockets faster than a jack rabbit on a date. By December 25th we are broke, broke, broke. That’s why it’s inevitable that we will have some kind of unexpected, mechanical malfunction before the month is over. Sometimes it’s an appliance. Sometimes it’s a car. It’s always expensive and falls at a time when we least need it. This year it’s the controller for the automatic window on the driver’s side of our van. It quit working a couple of weeks ago. Hubby discovered this problem on an unusually warm day when he hit the button and pfffft, nothing, nada, sorry for your luck, so long sucker, I’m out of here, hasta lavista baby, hit the road Jack and don’t ‘cha come back no more, no more, no more. It refused to budge from its already lowered position. Having a car window that won’t go up is a problem in the winter. He struggled with it and tugged and pulled until he finally got the window back up. A quick phone call to the mechanic yielded a verdict of at least $154 for the repairs. That total will likely go somewhat higher when all is said and done. Since it was either fix the window or eat this month, we decided to tough it out and wait until next month when the holiday bills are paid and the tax man has taken his slice of flesh off of our backside. We figured what the heck, it’s winter. It’s cold outside. We won’t need to roll down the window anyway. That theory worked fine….until last night.

I took Teen Angel to a Christmas party and did a little shopping while she was rockin’ around the Christmas tree. Before I picked her up again I went through the drive thru at Steak and Shake to get Hubby a fresh, nutritious 8:30pm dinner. I forgot about the “don’t put the window down under any circumstances” rule. I remembered a split second after I hit the automatic button; the one that zips the window down in .00002 seconds. It was too late. Trying to grab it before it slid down that crack was like trying to catch a greased pig in a butter factory. Of course it refused to budge. Did I mention it has rained here for five straight days? Including yesterday? Yeah, good times. I yanked, tugged, pulled, jiggled and jerked all parts of the door to no avail. It was about this time the light drizzle became a heavy drizzle. With the heater on full blast and a cold wind rushing through my hair, I slid into the Applebee’s parking lot on two wheels, hollered for Teen Angel to get her fanny in the van quickly and took off. “Did you bring a coat?” I asked. “You’re gonna need one.” It was about this time the drizzle became an all out rain shower. We still had a twenty minute drive home. I yanked, tugged, pulled and jiggled some more to no avail. I should probably tell you that Hubby is extremely particular about the vehicles we drive. He is a neat freak and likes every part of his car clean, shiny and spotless. He spends more money on car cleaning products than Britney Spears spends on chewing gum. He has a serious aversion to water spots on leather. More tugging, pulling and jiggling. And a little prayer. About the time I started to panic, the window magically arose and slid shut. “Thank you God!” I shouted. In no time at all we were toasty warm and singing with Motley Crue. Until the first car passed me on the interstate.

“Did you hear that?” I asked. “That car seemed a little loud. Something’s not shut. Is there a window cracked or a door not closed? There’s a draft somewhere.” I started to panic again because it was raining pretty hard. We looked but didn’t find anything. A few more cars whizzed past. “I KNOW something isn’t shut. I can tell. Find it.” We finally discovered that in all of my button pushing earlier, I had hit the switch that opens one of the windows in the very back of the van. I didn’t even know that window could open. Never mind that we’ve had that van for about three years. Relieved that we had prevented an outright flood of the rear of the van we drove home peacefully to the soothing sounds of “Girls, girls, girls”. When we got home I grabbed a towel in the garage and wiped out the driver’s side of the van before going into the house. While I felt no particular need to alarm Hubby over the whole water on leather incident, that stinkin’ Teen Angel had already tattled on me, so I had to come clean. Hubby rushed out to check out the van, and it was then that I learned that the little button that operates the rear window also controls ANOTHER rear window that was still open. It was open during the entire rainy drive home. Oops!

So, in order to keep our marriage intact, I’m just going to stay away from the van until we get it fixed. I just can’t guarantee that I can keep my finger off the buttons. That will keep the ho, ho, ho in our holiday and keep me, me, me out of trouble. See, if we lived in Aruba this would NOT be a problem.