The cherry on top...

Post Authoring Note:  This is long, and probably uninteresting, but I promise the end is worth the read.

I had extremely high hopes for Saturday.  For weeks, I had been planning on walking in a 5K for the Humane Society with a few of my girls.  Not only was this organized physical activity (which I typically avoid at all costs...but really...I'm trying to turn over a new leaf), but it was also for a good cause.

Enter: The rain on my parade (LITERALLY).

I woke up on Saturday morning around 6am.  The weather guy said there was a 50% chance of rain.  Since lately I've been trying to be a glass-half-full-kinda-gal, I held out hope that we'd avoid getting poured upon.  No. Such. Luck.

It was cold. It was rainy.  But still, I used all the caloric goodness (a whopping 70 calories) to summon up a positive attitude.  We finished the walk and then I started to get very excited about "Super Secret Saturday".

For those of you who don't know this about me, one of my favorite activities is taking a space and redoing it.  I've moved around enough that I get to do what I love often enough.  In fact, I've been fortunate enough to have several people in my life trust me enough to let me get my hands on their spaces. I mentioned to SG that I felt like redoing something in my apartment and she said she would offer up their home office for me redesign.

Honestly, the shopping is usually my favorite part.  However, keep in mind that it's cold, windy, and raining.  The first thing SG and I did was frequent the Lotawana Garage Sale festivities.  After scoring a desktop organizer for 2 dollars we were hopeful.  However, have you ever noticed the kind of crap people put out at garage sales?  No lady, I don't want to pay 7 dollars for the hamster habitat that you bought in 1987.  Anyway, the moral of that story: Don't believe the hype.  No matter how colorful or promising the "HUGE GARAGE SALE" sign is, chances are, you'll be disappointed.

We headed off to Office depot where we got what we thought was a stellar deal on a really cool office chair and a file organizer that matched the $20 desk we found on the classifieds.  We hit up Lowe's to buy paint and supplies.  Another note:  Why is it that home improvement stores suck the life out of you?  I mean, who are those places optimized for?  Seriously.  We got the paint, we were still excited.  Then began the search for a sleeper chair.  Earlier in the day, I mentioned that maybe we should go somewhere like Bob's Discount Furniture.  At this point, SG says "Wait, that's a real place?  They exist?"  Ironically enough, that's the last place we stopped on our world tour of greater KC furniture stores.  The search was unsuccessful.  It was only 3pm at this point.  It had already felt like the world's longest day.  We got all our goods back to the house and took a break to get some calories in.

Truth be told, the actual painting and planning was really fun (at least for me).  Where things took a turn for the worse is when we had to assemble the furniture we bought.  Who the hell writes those instructions?  Also, if you're going to reference parts using letters and numbers, PUT THE FRIGGIN LETTERS OR NUMBERS ON THE PARTS.  After dealing with those instructions and all those parts, I am really passionate about how horrible instructions are.  I would like to start a letter writing campaign to the government to regulate the quality of furniture assembling instructions.  Okay, so perhaps that's a stretch, but I'm still peeved.  Around 1am, we finished everything.  The room looked awesome (in my opinion).

Here's where the cherry on top comes in.  There are some things in this life that you do that are so embarrassing, so incredibly stupid or careless on your part, that you can't bear to have people find out you did them.  This should probably be one of those things, but since I'm an open book, I'll share it with you guys anyway.

I had backed the Lexus into SG's driveway so we could unload the desk and then all our shopping goods.  I was so incredibly tired and was so excited to crawl into bed when I got home.  It's still cold and windy and raining.  I remember clearly putting the seat warmer on, and turning the heat up.  The rest is kind of a blur.

In order for this story to make sense, you have to understand some of the logistics involved.  SG's house is on a hill.  Her driveway is steep and curves a bit.  At the end of the driveway, on either side, are concrete blocks (sorta the height of a parking block) that prevent you from going into what I like to call their moat.  So I pull out of their driveway in Drive (since I'm backed into their driveway, I can pull out face first).  I really thought I had cleared the blocks and the moat so I started to turn right out of their driveway.  Clearly, I overestimated how far down the driveway I was.  Instead of clearing the moat, my front tire (on the passenger side) went over the concrete block and I was dangling with that tire over the edge, touching nothing.  The car was basically teetering on the concrete block.  The car looked like it was going to tip right over into the moat.  I jumped out of the car and then ran back up to SGs door to tell her I broke the car.

After calming down a bit, I called Lexus Roadside Assistance.  They were so helpful and friendly.  They sent out a tow truck at no cost to me to "winch" me out of the moat.  They were there within the hour.  The tow guy basically said that there was a good chance trying to get the car out would cause damage to the undercarriage because of the concrete block.  I had to sign a waiver and then he began his work.  Note: before he started working, he outright laughed at me and asked me if I was drunk.  He then said that I shouldn't worry about him damaging his car because he's been doing this since he was 16 and he'd never damaged a car.  The guy was 24.

The tow guy told SG she should call the Lotawana police since his truck was blocking the majority of the street.  Now, this city probably doesn't see a whole lotta action.  The one and only police officer on duty actually shows up.  Now we have the blazing lights of a tow truck AND a police officer at 2am.  People start trying to drive by.  Each person's face was priceless as they gawked at my misfortune.  If there was a thought cloud above their head, it would probably read something like "OMG.  What kind of idiot can't pull out front first out of a driveway."  Anyway, the police officer also was laughing at me and asked how this could possibly happen.  He then asked for my name, at which point, I begged him not to publish this in the Lake Lotawana news.  He promised he wouldn't, but how can I really be sure? 

This has already been a really long story so I can't say "To make a long story short".  It took about 30 minutes to get the car out and there was minimal damage.  I can't say enough how lucky I am to have Sudhir.  When I called him panicked, he very patiently told me that I should call roadside assistance.  He then told me "I can tell that you're worrying like crazy...don't worry, it's just a car.  You didn't get hurt, it's no big deal."  I'm not sure how many women are lucky enough to have a man that would say that to them when they drove his dream car head first (completely sober) into a moat.

The end.