G-man is very proud of himself as you can see by the above picture. I picked up the Mountaineer yesterday afternoon at his place of employment and left the Tracker for him to drive home. He is bursting with pride because he was able to actually make it home. Granted we live 2 blocks from where G-man works, but still, he made it home. Thank God for small blessings! He said that once he figured out he was stalling out because he forgot to take the emergency brake off it was smooth sailing after that. And to make him even prouder some people he worked with saw him drive off in the Tracker so now they know that he can definitely drive a stick shift. In his mind he belongs to the real man’s club now that he can drive a stick. Don’t tell him this but I thought he belonged to the real man’s club all along.

This morning he decided he wanted to take the Tracker to work again. Good sense told me to say no, but I didn’t. (I know, just say No!) I watched out of the window and he tried to drive away. I have a feeling that he left the emergency brake on again for a bit. At the end of our street we intersect with a major street. That is where he stalled out repeatedly with rush hour traffic oncoming and there he was half in the road. I was scared. Fortunately after many attempts he finally made it. I’m too old for the stress of this. I think I need to take the Tracker back before the transmission falls out. Find ‘em and grind ‘em is not the way to treat a 9 year old Tracker. Poor baby.



We went to the movies last night to see Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. It was actually quite good. We both absolutely loved it. I was surprised to find out at the end of the movie that it wasn’t animated, it was actually puppets that they used in the film. Whatever it was it was certainly good.

Debi has some issues with a friend (ex-friend I think) that owes her money. It was so reminiscent of my ex-friend Betsy that I just had to share. Betsy is one of those friends that never has her wallet on her when you go out to lunch together. Of course she doesn’t realize this until after she has eaten. So you end up paying for her rather large lunch while she swears that the next time it is her treat. Notice she doesn’t say “I’ll pay you back”, she says “Next time it’s my treat”. Next time never comes. Last September she asked me out to lunch. Somehow I ended up paying for both of us as usual. During lunch she pulls out a brochure of wrapping papers and bows and ribbons that her son is selling for a school fundraiser. I tell her I am broke but she pleads for me to just buy any cheap little thing so he won’t be the only one that didn’t sell something. The next thing I know I have purchased $25 worth of over-priced Christmas wrapping paper. She has to have the money that very day. It’s the school’s rules not hers. I give her cash unfortunately. Thanksgiving comes and still no wrapping paper. She tells me that the school is late with their delivery and she will get it to me as soon as it comes in. I call several more times but no wrapping paper, always some excuse. Finally I call on Christmas Eve. Oh I’ve got your wrapping paper she says, sorry I didn’t get it to you yet. Guess you’ll just have to keep it for next Christmas. My bad. No I say, I can actually use it tonight, I’m on my way over. NO she exclaims, in a panic. We are on the way out the door right now, sorry, oops, gotta go now, bye. And I don’t hear anything from her for months. She doesn’t take my calls either so I stopped calling. Finally in March she calls me and wants me to take her out for a drive or shopping or anything. She is car-less and bored to death. I mention the wrapping paper and she says that it was in a bureau that she had but she sold the bureau and forgot to take the wrapping paper out of it. Sorry, I’ll buy you some next Christmas she says. No, that’s alright I say, just give me the $25 back and we’ll be square. So I drive over the next day to pick her up. First off, karma is a bitch. You see, Betsy never turned in that order to the school. She got all of her friends and family to place orders and she kept every cent of the money. She even did that to her mother and her sisters. Her sisters won’t speak to her now because of it. Apparently this is not the first time she has done this to her family and they are sick of it and of her. Like I said, karma is a bitch. Guess what happened to old Betsy? She gained 150 pounds in a short amount of time. She weighed 343 pounds!!! Now pardon me but that is large especially for a 5’ 2” woman. Karma baby! She starts off by apologizing about the wrapping paper and says that she is going to make it right. Notice she didn’t say “I am going to give you your money back”, instead she said “I am going to make it right”. Her idea of making it right was to give me a candle she got from the dollar store, some cheap-ass makeup she had ripped off in a mail order scam and a candle tart burner. She says this is a belated birthday present, Christmas present and to make up for the wrapping paper problem (which she says wasn’t her fault). At first I think that $25 is not worth losing a friend over. I even talked to my mom about it and we both agreed that $25 is not worth losing a friend over. I even forgave the fact that I ended up having to buy both of us lunch that day, use my gas to drive her fat ass all over town and I had to pay her admission into this museum that she wanted to go to. But then a couple of days later she called me and asked me for my credit card so she could charge a weeks worth of hotel stay on it for a trip she was making to Denver. You see she and her husband don’t have a credit card or even a checking account. I told her that I couldn’t. I made up a lie and said it was maxed out. She got pushy and asked me to get one of my husbands credit cards. I lied and said he would not let me use his credit cards. She had the balls to ask me to steal my husbands credit card so she could use it. And notice that she never made any mention of paying me back. I refused to let her use either my cards or my husbands and she broke down crying and when that didn’t work she got bitchy with me. She called the next day thinking I may have changed my mind about letting her use one of my credit cards. Finally I stopped taking her calls altogether. I reflected back on our “friendship” and came to the conclusion that we never really had a friendship. What we had was an arrangement which was she would use me and I would let her. I decided it was time to out an end to that arrangement. And that is the tale of Betsy. R.I.P.