Car Drama

In case you’ve been reading on my bloghost site, I forgot to mention that I wrote a whole week’s blog and then chickened out about posting it publicly. If you’re interested in reading the “missing” post, please contact me privately.

So here we are again. I’m sitting alone on my couch in my underwear eating “Gin-Gins” and you are sitting at your email wondering why I just shared that. It’s ok, I’m wondering that too.

PartnerPenguin has gone and returned to the Key Route City in search of a job. I’m back to trying to figure out how to life. On one hand, it’s nice that it’s quite again. My life seems to consist of bulimic fits of adventure followed by lulls of filling up the emptiness with new exercise regimes. My prediction is that the next phase is going to involve some lackluster weight lifting at TLoTH’s gym and maybe getting up the courage to bike again. I’m also thinking of Roller Derby but since my family banned me from playing rugby, I feel like that probably holds true for all contact sports. Pro tip: don’t play a match with a concussion, and especially don’t hide the fact that you have a concussion from your coach.

So speaking of more recent decisions that weren’t informed by concussed 15 year olds… I wanted to tell you all about my car. Her name is Mabel. If I decide to get one of those stupid VW “bra” things, she is going to look like this:

In my previous relegation, I described in gruesome detail how White Car got to be a fucked-to-death-pile-of-caa-caa. I wanted to touch base on what’s happened since then because I think it’s absolutely ridiculous and I’m interested to hear what people think, especially if they’ve been in similar situations.

Shortly after White Car got totaled, Partner Penguin got back to the Hill and helped me decide how to move forward. Our research suggested going to a local credit union would be our best option. Great. I got a pre-approval for a loan and then we borrowed cars from friends until we found Mabel, at a dealership 90 miles away. We deliberated most of the terms of the agreement and made the salesman miss the fight. Contracts were signed, keys were handed over and PartnerPenguin and I drove off into the night.

A major motivator of getting a car so quickly was that Niece #1 was coming to visit us for a week. (She was kind enough to recap our adventures last week!)  Let’s call Week 1 the week of August 2 (Sunday). Niece #1/PHX visit happened starting Thursday, Week 2. It is now week 4. So this is how it went.

Week 1: Purchase car with pre-approval letter. There are stipulations about year manufactured and how much will be covered. Pre-approval letter specifically DOES NOT define anything about mileage, or what constitutes as a change in offer based on mileage.

Friday, Week 1: Loan officer calls and I don’t pick up because I work in a concrete box for a living. By the time I see her call, the bank is closed, I figure she was just calling to check up on the purchase.

Monday, Week 2 (t-4 days to travelling): Loan officer calls cell phone again as well as work phone. I call her back. She tells me that my loan has been denied because the mileage of the car is absurdly high. I bought the car with 124,000 miles. Honestly, this was the lowest mileage I saw anywhere. She berates me a bit about how could I possibly think of buying something with such high mileage and then we hang up. 

At this point, I take a good hard look at my life and decide if having a car is worth it. I draw up pros and cons lists and decide that it’s a blessing in disguise and I could probably get my money back and be able to see my shul family for High Holy Days instead. We could get a rental car for traveling and borrow a friend’s car for Niece #1’s visit. I’m sad about the loss of such a big item, but I know I’ll get over it.

Tuesday, Week 2: I procrastinate/try to work and not think about the car. During lunch, PartnerPenguin and I read through all of the contracts to determine what our timeline is. We find out we only have 48 hours from learning about financing falling through to return the car. Did I mention the dealership is 90 miles away? And this is during lunch?

Early afternoon I call the dealership. I will be in that town the next day and I want to know how strict they are about this kind of thing. I talk with a man in finance and ask him whether I need to return the car today or whether I can return it tomorrow. He says he does not know what I’m talking about, the car is financed and all of the registration fees and such have been paid. I’m like…uh, what?! The bank declined my loan and they told me this less than 48 hours ago so I would like to return the car please.

This is the part that pissed me off the most.

The dealership went to a different credit union. They did not ask my permission. They did not have my consent. They told a completely different bank that I was going to pay them a bajiggady thousand dollars for the next blah amount of years. On top of that, the second bank had to do a hard pull on my credit, which is not excellent for me. If I return the car at this point, I would have to return it to Bank 2 and have a repo on my record.

I’ve had mixed responses to this action by the dealership. Some people have told me I am over-reacting; I would just send a check to some unknown place either way. The finance guy didn’t even think there was a problem at all; I wanted the car after all, didn’t I? Some people have agreed with me that this was a completely shoddy business practice.

Week 2 ended, as you read about in PHX with lots of crazy-fun adventures. Week 3 was great fun with Niece #1. We went to my favorite hike, played fun word-games with friends and went to the local hot springs.

It was not until this week, Week 4, that I got ANY correspondence from Bank 2 about my loan. It didn’t even have a loan contract in the envelope, just general bank account information. I still don’t have the exact information about the company I’m expected to pay a significant amount of money to for the next few years.

I keep vacillating between pissed and exhausted. I finished this masterpiece yesterday.

I’m proud that I finished something, but I feel insufficient. I feel like now that I owe Real Money to Real Invisible Entities: I am an adult. I hate feeling like that. I hate that fuckwads in managerial positions can alter the course of my financial life without consent. I hate feeling like a pawn. I hate getting talked down to by the clerk at the store because I want to return an item because I need the money more than the item.

I do appreciate the fact that I can cope with these things and that they are helping me move forward with my adult life, not hindering me from living it. I was recently compared to a woman with two kids who works two jobs and is barely scraping by. The person comparing us said even though I’m “broke” I don’t have it as bad as her. This is true, in a way. But I felt frustrated by this comparison for two reasons. I am in my current position because I chose to go along a path of education and made a mutual agreement with my partner that we wouldn’t have kids until we both felt more ready to deal with that responsibility.

The second reason this frustrated me is that it completely invalidates my problems as a reality. The minute you take away someone’s reality as valid, it makes her or his entire existence less valid. People do this to each other, even to loved ones, all the time. I am working along my path and you are working along yours. Lived experiences are parallel and don’t ever touch.

I hope next time someone says something along these lines; I can get to this latter point faster and actually tell them they are invalidating me. I wonder what that would feel like.

To close out, I would like to present two totally different songs. The first is deeply spiritual and found me from out of the blue. It affected the depths of my soul and I hope you find some meaning in it too.

Niece #1 shared the second song. It sums up EXACTLY what it feels like to learn a second language, in my opinion. I’m looking at you, French class in college.