Day 21

Every time I have to get fingerprinted for a job (this is the third time since 2007), I worry that I'm going to be arrested on the spot because of the time I didn't show up for jury duty. I didn't actually have to show up since I was in college in a different state, so I wrote them and told them so, but they never contacted me in any way to let me know that they had received my note.

And I've passed like six background checks since then, so I know that they must have gotten my note, but it doesn't stop me worrying.

So today, I got fingerprinted so that I can get my tech license. I went into town with Gabe this morning, and I was going to go straight to the court to get this done. Instead, I pulled into a gas station to fill up, and when I left, my left turn signal started freaking out and blinking really fast. I pulled into the Kmart parking lot and checked it. It didn't work.

I live on a dirt road, and even our driveway is dirt, so the entire back of the car was just filthy. I'm not trying to play up a little dirt; I mean that the only part of the back window that you could even see through was about half the area where the back wiper goes because it was caked with mud, and I have had no extra money for to even get windshield wiper fluid until today. The license play was barely legible. And no way was I touching it with my bare hands until I washed the car. I drove to a gas station and realized that the only bill I had in my wallet was a ten, and I was already kind of freaking out that a cop would catch me before I got the blinker fixed because I'm only afraid of five things: elevators, webcams, spiders, bees, and cops. So I just put my ten in that damn machine and got a fifteen-minute car wash. But the car looks really, really clean. It was really windy, though, so at this point, I was completely soaked, including my coat.

I'm not very good with cars. I was pretty proud of myself that I even managed to find the manual, figure out what kind of light I needed, and almost install it myself. I could get the wiring off the light cover (one of two big, transparent red pieces of plastic that go on the back of the car that the lights are in) just fine, but I couldn't get the damn bulb cover (little black part that the bulb is in that screws into the red part) off. Instead, I drove to an auto part store and brought the entire cover (red part) in with me. Apparently, the bulb had shorted or something and melted its cover (the black part) into the red part, so there was no way I could have gotten it out on my own. But it's fixed now, and I did it without asking anybody that I knew for help, and I'm pretty proud of that.

That was my day. Soaked to the bone, reeking of that weird oil/tire smell from an auto-parts store with my fingers black from that fingerprinting ink. So much for my last day off this week.