Bad news.

Today I woke up and hit the ground running. I dropped off my car for a check up before leaving the area (responsible), set up an account with a more convenient and plentifully located bank in Pittsburgh (responsible), started cleaning my room so the floor will be clear and the dresser/ bureau will be ready to be moved (responsible) and went to purchase bathroom needs for my new place (responsible).

I had planned on writing a blog about how savvy I was feeling because I got a really chic shower curtain and bedset (room set) without breaking the bank. In fact, I was going to crow about how I was born to decorate. I returned from the shopping trip rejuvenated and began carefully wrapping up my doll collection for the move.

I was in the midst of wrapping Felicity (American girl doll) when the car shop called.

I expected maybe a few minor repairs to have it in tip top shape or to preemptively take care of things so I wouldn't have to in PA. I expected to have to shell out some money, it's an old car and I realize that, but no worse.

So when I got the equivalent of you may want to sit down for this...I still wasn't fully prepared for what was to come. It was just above "well, we took care of towing it to the junk yard for you." in terms of bad news.

I had been assuming it would more or less hold out a year. Just a year. It was all I asked of the car. And I had grown to love the car. But is has turned on me like an angry teenager, except, well, much older.

Apparently it is unlikely that i will get my year. Which was a nice way of saying, it is closer to a joke. Truth be told I make light of it now but I [s]almost[/s] had a full blown panic attack when they told me all the parts which were severely rotted. Oh and the problem with the anti lock brakes. (That's not scary. Oh wait. YES IT IS.)

Oh and about the parts that are now obsolete. So, when it goes (and it's going alright), that will be it. No easy fix. No fix. No.

And of course it could last 11.9 months, or 2 days. Or 3 months, or 5 weeks.

It's a time bomb.

And that's fine, in a sense any car could be. things break and nothing lasts forever.

But I will be very far from family and friends. I will be wholly independent. And I will be a very broke grad student making 0 income.

0 income.

How do you get another car on 0 income?

You take the bus. The unreliable, late, limited schedule, bus. This makes the bus RIDER unreliable, sometimes late, and limited. I do not like that.

Fine, I'll haul my groceries on the bus, my purchases, whatever. I'll stand outside in the cold and rain. People have to do this sometimes.

But the second I'm late or show up wet/soaked/not presentable, that damn bus will reflect on my reputation. And that, in my mind is absolutely horrific. Because I am always on time, always presentable. I am accommodating and flexible when a superior needs me to be somewhere. The thought of having to work around/suffer the consequences of a bus while trying to be a professional young lady has me in a fit.

Over dramatic? Sure, but it's my first move and first time away from home. I have responsibilities. And I have worries. Cut me some slack, it's pretty dire news for an already scared, nervous 22 year old girl.

I must have wracked up bad karma with my superficial attachment to the shower curtain. This shall be a lesson learned: if you get the urge to brag about your purchases, your car will suddenly be found to be rotted, obsolete and about to spontaneously combust.

Don't do it.