Missy Diggs

Maybe Mercury’s shadow is still casting a bit of gloom over the situation, or maybe buying a car is just hard, but the last two days I have been busting my butt trying to find, finance, inspect, and purchase an appropriate replacement for the Big Red Car, and what do I have to show for it? Nada, that’s what.

It all started last week when I found the perfect car at the perfect dealership. Well, actually it was a minivan and even if it wasn’t perfect it was at least my favorite color. And I found it on the Internet, and the dealer conveniently provided a way for me to apply for financing on line, and then they sent me an email that said, Come on in, and if you bring a suitable down payment we’ll sell you the car.

Hooray!

But it took us about 24 hours to scramble around and determine that we have about half a suitable down payment in our hot little hands and it will take us a few days to come up with the rest. We are struggling for liquidity, you see. So the next day we went in to the dealer to give them the money we did have and see if they would hold the car for us but right before we got there somebody else bought it.

So, we were sad, but we knew they didn’t have any other cars that we wanted that day because the Internet had told us that they did have some cars that we might want except that they were all white and the only thing we want less than a white car is a black car. Which they also had. So we left but said that we would keep an eye on their inventory and be back in a flash if they got something good. And we said to each other, Well, it’s too bad we didn’t get that seemingly perfect car but at least this gives us a little time to liquify the necessary assets so we will have the suitable down payment all ready to go when the next great car comes up.

Which it did, just yesterday as a matter of fact, though unfortunately not at the perfect dealership, rather at some other dealership located much farther away from perfection. In the suburbs, if you will. But this car was silver, and not white or black, and it had LEATHER seats and other lovely extras, and reasonably low miles, and a very lovely low price.

And so I applied for financing at that dealership and first they told me that if I had a trade-in they could finance my purchase of this car, actually a minivan, that I so desired. But I said, I don’t have a trade-in cause of how one of our cars is all smashed up and the other of our cars is our only car. But I do have a suitable down payment, actually worth more than our only remaining car would fetch as a trade-in anyway. Cause it’s our “second car,” you know? Not the really good one (which got smashed) but the other one. The one that needs work and that leaks certain fluids and that has the back seat window held up with duct tape. The one that we certainly would have loved to trade in if only we still had the Big Red Car to bop around in.

But no, said the car salesman, they won’t finance this car with a down payment of actual money. Only with a trade in. Is that, I asked, because of the credit rating? (Because there is a bit of trouble just right now with the credit rating and let me just share this tip that I have learned from my own experience: you may think that getting a really rare and aggressive form of cancer and then having your reliable mid-size economy car smashed by a recklessly driven SUV is a good way to build financial security, but you’d be wrong. Turns out it works against you.) But no, he said, it’s not the credit rating. It’s the mileage. The bank wants to finance a car that has less than 80,000 miles on it, but this very well kept and reasonably priced minivan has 80,500 miles on it so the bank says no.

Oh, I see, I say, though at this point I do not see at all and also time has elapsed during which I have gone home, eaten dinner, slept, spent time with the lymph machine, eaten breakfast, and come back to the dealership to continue the same baffling conversation. But! he says. We have some other cars! That the bank says you can buy. They will finance a car with lower mileage for up to almost twice the cost. Say, maybe this car, or that one. And he points to a giant Lexus SUV and also some other car that is so completely everything I don’t want that it is literally invisible to me. But then somehow I get the idea that if they will finance almost twice the cost maybe they will finance TWO cars, and then we could trade in the one car or something (not that we actually have the title in our possession, you see, but it is on its way to us and we can always pray that it will arrive today).

And for some reason, maybe because I have mesmerized him with my car-buying insanity, the car guy says Yes! I think we could do that! And so I test drive two cars, which happen to be the Lexus SUV and this little Kia Rio. Which I think is just a hilarious combination and for that reason alone I want to buy both of them and see if they interact in any way that would reveal basic and startling truths about social class in America. Or something.

Well. They are both great, and fun to drive in totally different ways. The Kia because it is tiny and thrifty and eager to please and it has a cute personality and it stops on a dime. The Lexus because, even though it has a weird perfumey smell all in it, is all leather and fake wood and automatic everything with a sun roof, and when you accelerate it smoothly and gracefully picks up speed at an almost alarming rate, and there is a place to put your purse and even a special little footrest for your non-accelerating foot so it doesn’t get tired just sitting there or so you don’t smudge your newly-painted toenails or something.

So I get back to the dealership and then things start getting really weird. The guy who I’d been talking to is supposedly “with a customer” but in fact everytime I see him he is walking from the showroom to the office. I never ever see him walk the other way. He stops on the way to give me some news about my case, but I only understand about half of what he says because he uses pronouns exclusively without antecedents and also he seems to use car dealer lingo, which I can only translate about a third of the time. Also there is a woman who is somehow helping us, though her name is something other than “Rebecca” even though the guy keeps telling us that Rebecca is working on the numbers and Rebecca will be right out. This other woman also does  not believe in antecedents and she is maybe a little bit rude, though not in a way I feel I should take personally because it looks like she talks to everyone like that. And she really is “with a customer” but keeps getting up to go “talk to the boss” the way they do at car dealerships and some of the time when she is going to talk to the boss she actually comes over to tell me things like, “Looks like you’re gonna get your deal but my finance manager says he has to put everything in his name,” and then she stalks off while I try to figure out what exactly my deal is and whether the finance manager is talking about himself or about Mr. B, which is what I figure it must be, but the way things have been going, who knows?

But I have a vague sense that things are going okay, and anyway Mr. B and I have talked and agreed that we want to buy both cars but if we can only buy one we want the Kia cause it has way fewer miles on it, would make a good replacement for our second car (though we’d still be searching for our “first car”) and anyway costs a LOT less than the ridiculous luxury SUV.

But the dealer guy has been working the deal to secure financing for the Lexus. Cause that’s what he wants to sell us, for one thing. And cause even though it actually has MORE miles on it than the minivan that we couldn’t finance because it had too many miles, it also costs lots more so apparently the bank thinks that’s fine. And we say, well if we can only get one of them we want the Kia. And he says well, you probably only can get one of them because of how you still have this “open auto.” And we finally figure out that he means because there is still a balance on the loan for the Big Red Car because of how the insurance company offered us the “retail value” but not the “replacement value” and we had never heard of this thing called “gap insurance,” which is apparently what you need if you are in a situation like ours where somebody totally trashes your car so that it can never be driven again and the only thing you did wrong was leave your house that day and neglect to buy a kind of insurance you had never heard of.

So, because the paperwork for the Big Red Car is still haunting us, we can only buy one car. And it can’t be the Kia cause the bank “likes” a Lexus better than a Kia. For obvious reasons, I’m sure, but we don’t even like SUVs (actually, I may have mentioned that I am planning to destroy get them all off the roads by the end of the year someday) and we do like buying things that we can afford rather than buying things that are much too expensive and that we can’t afford to repair just so that the bank can feel secure about their investment or whatever.

So we flee. Actually, by this time I had totally taken leave of my senses and I was in love with the Lexus SUV and I couldn’t believe that I’d never realized how much I love the fake wood and the leather and the perfumey smell and probably the only reason I think luxury cars are a little ridiculous is that I’ve never been fortunate enough to own one but now here is my chance and I can’t let it pass me by!!!!! But Mr. B takes me gently in hand, and he says, in the kind of voice you use to talk someone in off the ledge, “Honey. I don’t want to say anything negative, and I am just as eager as you are to get this whole thing settled and behind us, but I honestly believe that a Lexus SUV with 85,000 miles on it, and that will cause us to go over our budget on our monthly car payment, is not the right car for our family.” He reaches out for my hand, and I extend my hand as if in slow motion, and nod my head without blinking my eyes, and allow myself to be led away from the giant luxury vehicle.

And now we are back at square one and even the white and/or black minivans at the perfect dealer are starting to look mighty perfect to me. Providing, of course, that they will accept a down payment and not require a trade in, and providing also that the cars are sufficiently expensive without having too many miles on them, and providing, of course, that sweet darling Mercury continues to get her giant meddling butt out of our way.

Well, just when I was getting on a kick of updating every couple of weeks instead of once a quarter, I fell back into my old rhythms. And I’ll tell you why. Cause it’s been a hell of a month around here, that’s why.

I told you about the car crash, of course. Well, that has provided me with various and annoying inconveniences, such as Not Having a Car and Going to the Chiropractor Every Damn Day. I mean, I’m glad I wasn’t seriously hurt, and I’m seriously glad that neither the Vivid Girl nor the wedding cake were in the back of the car, but I’m still really irritated that there are people out there driving cars three times the size of mine without feeling the need to exercise at least three times the caution that I do. More would be better, cause honestly I’m not even that careful what with all the makeup application, phone calls, and passing snacks and drinks to the back seat though at least I do manage not to run right into people.

So anyway it was obvious that once I rested up a bit and stopped popping pain pills I had a bunch of stuff to do. Like deal with the insurance paperwork and go to the chiropractor and get a new car. But first I had to go to Houston to meet my new doctor and have a checkup and a treatment so I did that first. And, despite my determination to have the most. fun. cancer. ever. it wasn’t really that fun of a trip. For various reasons. My new doctor is good, though, and I finally found the secret of getting the right person to start my IV the first time so that I don’t have to listen to the chemo nurses moan about what bad veins I have while they stab with needles for 45 minutes in order to get me ready for a 15 minute treatment. But some of my paperwork didn’t get to the right place in time, and the chemo suite was running two hours late, and there were just generally some irritating aspects of the whole venture that made me feel that I would much rather be at home playing Bejeweled in my pajamas.

Which is exactly where I was for the following week, because even though my treatment wasn’t technically “chemo,” in that it’s a drug that is being used to prevent cancer rather than treat it, it still makes me sick. And even though the effects of chemo were somewhat predictable, the effects of this drug on me have been all over the place. Sometimes I get really sick with a fever and everything. Sometimes I get a weird rushing sound in my ears and my legs hurt for a couple of days. Twice in a row I had no apparent reaction whatsoever. This time I got depressed. And even though I have a personal rule against looking up health information on the Internet when I am depressed, I looked it up: depression is a known side effect of this treatment that occurs in 14% of patients studied. Why a bone medicine causes depression I do not know. Everything else about depression I know all too well. The kicker is that, even though my old rock star cancer doctor (from Italy, swoon!) thought that I need to take this medicine every three months, my new (stodgy, old, American) cancer doctor says that he will give it to me if I want it, but only every six months, and he doesn’t think I need it.

And both of these recommendations are based on the same study. Which apparently is the only one available. What’s a cancer patient to do?

Well, in this case, I guess I just need to plan ahead for the next treatment and make sure I’m in a cozy quiet low-stress place (Lake Tahoe, anyone?) with my iPhone charged and plenty of chocolate laid in. But that’s not what I did this time. This time I came home to where my husband and the Vivid Girl live, and I got up in the mornings, and I drove them around in Mr. B’s car. Cause of how I don’t have a car anymore. But the problem on at least two of the days was I got started driving them around but then I would start crying and falling apart, and Mr. B would have to leave work to take me home and then he would have to do all the driving around. On the third day I just stayed home and played Bejeweled and watched 30 Rock and got friends to come pick me up and drive me to the chiropractor. Much better.

So that week passed and then it was the next week and I still didn’t have a car. Because of how I still had to deal with the insurance paperwork and by that time it was also obvious that I should have gone to see a personal injury lawyer and also I was so irritated that I had decided to declare war on SUVs and if I can’t get rid of them through legal channels I guess I’ll have to turn to more unconventional methods and then also I was still spending all my time at the chiropractor.

But, and here I come to the point of the post, I realized that all my problems were not because of the car crash at all. They were because Mercury is in retrograde. Or, it was, at the time. And even though I don’t place a whole lot of stock in all that astrology stuff I do place a bit of stock in it and here’s why. For two years when I was in college every single guy I was ever attracted to was a Scorpio. I could walk into a party with 50 people, only one of whom was born in October or November and that’s the one I would end up talking to. Every single time. Now, a lot of people I love are Scorpios (my mom is a Scorpio! and the Vivid Girl!) but any astrology book will tell you that it is not a good love sign for me, a wet and weepy Cancer girl. And I still don’t know what to make of the fact that for two years I was really attracted to what could only be dangerous, but I was pretty damn convinced by the numbers. It just wasn’t statistically possible for all the guys I met during two of the most social and flirtatious years of my life to have the same horoscope unless astrology is true.

So even though I like to think of myself as a Scientist, I had to admit that I was overwhelmed by the evidence. Just as, since then, I have been completely overwhelmed by the evidence that when Mercury goes into retrograde life goes into chaos. Total communication breakdown. Complete inability to do paperwork. I can’t schedule a meeting, get a good cell phone connection, or have a civil conversation about money with my husband. (This may have something to do with the fact that my husband, as a Gemini, is ruled by Mercury. Or, who knows? it may not.)

So here it is, more than a month after my car crash, and I still don’t have a car. Or an insurance settlement. Or a blog post. Because of Mercury. Because it has been an inauspicious time, all around. But as we move out of the shadow of Mercury in retrograde I can feel the auspiciousness rising. My sources tell me that things should be all cleared by May 28. And a good thing, too, cause that’s when the Vivid Girl gets out of school. For the whole summer.