vanny, vanny, vanny

sometimes i feel like the little annoyances of life stack & pile up all around me until i'm so tired of my own crap that i could just run away. and that's usually when i stop talking to most of the people who i like because i don't want them to be as bored of me as i am of myself. i don't want to be a whiner, but i have nothing of value that's not complainy to say, so i just shut the heck up & keep me to myself. that's where i've been lately. in that irritating, nothing-really-seems-bad-enough-for-a-legitimate-complaint-because-there-are-so-many-people-in-the-world-with-bigger-real-problems, place.

however,  i can tell you guys that one of my biggest irritations has finally been resolved. see, in tennessee, in order to get your license plates current & legal, your car has to pass inspection every year. that's fine, but if you drive an ancient car, like our vanny, it's hard to get it to pass inspection. april is the month when we have to deal with this every year, which thankfully falls around the time of tax returns. so a couple weeks ago, we dropped vanny off at the shop to get her back up to speed, waited 8 hours, while wandering aimlessly through parking lots and various retail shops in the rain (since we have no other running vehicle & didn't have a ride to anywhere else because we are low class & have very few local friends), then went back & gave them all our money. it was nearly $1300 to get everything done that needed to be done so vanny could pass her upcoming test. for us, that is a vast amount of money to spend on any one thing, but it had to be done & at least we had it to spend.

so we took her in for her inspection a couple days later & she failed her test. they couldn't tell us why, only that she wouldn't communicate with their machines, so they couldn't pass her. back to the mechanic. they say she tests out fine for them. back to an inspection station, but a different one this time in hopes that maybe she'll talk to their machines. nope. she failed her freakin test on 4 machines. we cried a little on the inside, not knowing what to do & hoping we wouldn't be forced to drive on expired tags for the rest of vanny's not-so-natural life whilst dodging any cops who drive behind us by zipping through neighborhoods or hiding inside car-washes (we did this for a year and a half once before getting busted).

we prayed & prayed & then chris took vanny to a third inspection station. first machine, fail. over to the second machine & finally, FINALLY, she decided to speak to that machine. she told it she was fine & dandy and didn't need any further servicing.

we can only conclude that vanny is a diva bee-otch and didn't want to communicate with the first 5 machines, but decided that she liked the last one enough to whisper out her secret - that though she may look old and crotchety, she really has no needs that must be attended to. i think she just wanted the attention.