Like many of you with teenagers and young twenty-somethings, we have a fleet of vehicles. We have four vehicles of various ages (aka mileage) and six drivers. As one of the adults in the house, I have a primary vehicle, Bert, the SUV of questionable origin. This is my go-to car. Lately, though, I have been the car-bouncer. This title is usually reserved for the kids, but it seems like now, it’s all mine. A couple weekends ago, Taryn was in town for a three day weekend commemorating Martin Luther King. I decided that on the Monday she was home, she could bring the college Subaru in for a recall. Easy enough. I made the appointment online, selecting “wait while car is serviced.” Taryn brought the car in though, and they told her that they needed to keep it overnight. WHAT??? That’s a LONG time to “wait while car is serviced.” Fortunately, they would let her take a “loaner” from Enterprise because she was 21. But this caused issues because Taryn needed to get back to school that day. 

So, Taryn stopped by my work, traded the loaner for Bert, and continued on her way to college. She had to park for the week in a sketchy area that apparently allows overnight parking on the street. College areas don’t allow overnight parking on the street, so I am not sure where Bert spent the week. So, I got to drive loaner car. They actually tried to get me to go back to the dealer to swap back at 8pm that Monday, but I told them I would be by after work the next day. So, I did just that, and by Tuesday evening, I was on my third car of the week, the white Subaru. 

The complication came when Trent had interviews in Michigan and we were expecting snow. He was driving the Acura, which has over 210,000 miles and some reliability issues. He was already taking our zip-code car out of the zip code by visiting Abby (his girlfriend) in Illinois, but there was no way I was allowing him to use if for an interview in Michigan. So, by Thursday, I was driving the worst car in the fleet, Trent had the white “college” Subaru, and Taryn had my Bert in Sketchy-ville. And, if you read last-weeks blog, the Acura is fine until I need to get up my driveway in the snow. I actually anticipated needing to get up my driveway. And the weather anticipated snow. 

In my mind, I needed to swap back the Subaru (which has a college parking sticker) for Bert before Bert got towed or vandalized, and Bert was three hours away. Also, since I work in a petri-dish of germ experimentation known as a school, I was struggling with an energy zapping, nausea inducing stomach bug. Not enough to stay home, just enough to feel like garbage. So by Friday, I lost my patience with Trent and told him (okay, yelled) he was changing his weekend plans and swapping the cars so I could sleep all weekend. After I jogged his memory that we provided shelter, food, and a car free of charge while he looked for a post-college job, AND we paid for college, he agreed that he should do that. So, Bert came home on Monday, but Trent has interviews in Chicago and Indianapolis this week, so I am still driving the Acura. I usually love snow, but I also like to park at the TOP of my ski-hill of a driveway, so for now, I am hoping the snow holds off. And I hope Trent finds a job and buys his own car. Wouldn’t that be nice?