SMOOCHIES! . . .

Before I go forth to complain about my RENTAL CAR, first things first: CONGRATULATIONS TO HA, DR.Y AND ABBY!!!!

The fourth member of their family arrived on Sunday evening: a healthy, plump little girl with quite an appetite, apparently. Sarah Robin Binna Yuhan, welcome to the family ...

I can't wait to go more broke on your behalf!

***

BACKWARDS DAY . . .

I hate my rental car. It's a white Ford Focus and it's TINY. They say they upgraded me from a compact to a midsize ... I shudder to think how many times I would have had to fold myself to fit into the compact vehicle, and I'm only 5'2", remember.

First of all, I hate white cars. There's just something about white vehicles that makes them look ... plastic-y. And when they get dirty, BOY, do they get dirty. Secondly, it has that rental car smell. That "I don't care if I smoke in the car and the stank gets into the upholstery because it's not my vehicle" smell. And it has that rental car acceleration sound; you know, it kind of rattles, even though it only has 6,000 miles on it. And it's so strangely sterile, despite the rental car stank. No one has made the car a home: there are no tissue boxes or CD's in the compartment, no wireless earpieces hanging off the rearview mirror, no EZ-Pass stuck to the window, no random maps and books and other assorted items cluttering the back seat and the trunk.

But the worst part about my rental car is that it's SMALL and it's BACKWARDS and it's SLOW. Each side mirror is smaller than my hand ... and they have to be manipulated manually, with little knobs which jut into the interior of the vehicle (not that the manipulation is worthwhile because I can't see anything reflected in them anyway). The rearview mirror is small and its reflection barely extends beyond the back seat. The rear window is small and I can barely see anything behind me. The steering wheel is small and I feel like a little blue-haired granny gripping it. The driver's seat is small and I imagine that is what it feels like to be wedged into a baby carseat as a fat infant who isn't quite tall enough to sit in a booster seat.

Everything in the car is manual, including the door locks and the windows. The door locks, I can live with, save for the fact that I probably looked like a fool opening, locking and closing each of the four doors this morning once I parked in the courthouse lot. But the windows ... the windows screwed me up and almost made me run into the police barriers near the parking lot entrance today. You have to roll the handle BACKWARDS to open them. Yes, BACKWARDS, as in TOWARDS your own body. Sigh. Moreover, the handle and the window are not completely aligned, so you can turn turn turn the handle several times, and the window will only roll down about two centimeters. I didn't realize this until I had turned the handle several times without watching, then reached my hand and security card out to swipe into the parking lot, and hit my hand HARD against the still-half-closed window. Thank God for tempered glass. I finally entered the lot, parked and moved to turn off the ignition, only to find that I almost broke my wrist in the process (ok, slight dramatization here). The ON position for the ignition is in a normal car's OFF position. And to turn the car OFF, I have to rotate the key back towards me about 180-degrees. I'm sorry, but my wrist just does not move this far back. I started laughing at myself, because I had to let go of the key after turning it once, then re-adjust my hand to keep turning it until the ignition turned off. Sigh, sigh and sigh. I could barely look at the vehicle as I left it and proceeded into work. Ugh.

Okay, okay, I know there are starving people in Africa who don't even have cars and have to walk miles and miles to their jobs, so I'll quit my whining now. But I just have to say, I really really miss Good Girl. She's the best. I hope she comes out of surgery alright ... and when she does, I'll wash her and feed her some tasty Premium gas with a high octane rating and tell her I love her over and over again.