I hate my car. No really, I do.

It was an Alexander kind of day. You know, "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day"?

Me and him, we're like THIS.

My wonderful, loving, supportive Hubby ran to the store last night after I got home from shadowing my director at a party. We needed a few last-minute things before our annual ski trip with friends and he knew the last thing I wanted to do was take the kids in the morning.

But I ended up doing it anyway. See, he didn't get salt. And we were out. Completely, totally out. Not a grain to be had in my house. Made making pancake mix a smidge difficult.

So when I finally dragged myself and the monkeys out to mail a package, hit the library and get ONE thing at the grocery store, I missed a telltale sign that we were going nowhere. A massively flat tire on the right rear of my van. At least when I started the van, she yelled at me.

"Hey dumbass! Your tire pressure is SEVEN. You ain't goin' nowhere."

No really, that's what she said. She's tired of me bad mouthing her all the time. Just because the seats didn't work and now they don't match and smell like new plastic, or the headlight is temperamental, or the radio loses ONLY my presets, not Craig's, or every once in a while it acts like there's no power steering...

Sorry. I digress.

My only saving grace was that we haven't returned the Grandparents' pickup that brought the New Other Woman home. I squeezed two kid seats into the front with me and we were off. Slowly. I'm not what you'd call a truck girl. I swung her wide and parked far away from everyone else at the library but got brave at Kroger. Darned if I didn't park it PERFECTLY between the lines and with about a foot to spare between the hood and the car across from me. Score.

But of course, there was still my van. Hubby came home early, tried to get enough air in it to drive and could instantly hear the hiss. When he backed it up to see the culprit, we found this:

I have replaced and/or patched that same tire FIVE times now in the three years I've had the van. The first was the week after we brought it home. I should have taken that as a sign.

This car really, really hates me.

And she was due for new tires anyway, so $800 later, we can drive to Michigan for our ski weekend.

Starting out to be a damn expensive weekend...