I want to say "Lesson Learned",

but in all reality, it will probably happen again:

I am the Queen of Ignoring Car Noises.

You know when you're in your car and you hear something weird, and you can either turn down the radio and listen (to later report to your husband) OR you can turn up the radio and pretend it's not happening? I go with the latter, every.single.time.

I don't really have any rationale for this, other than my hope that if I ignore it, it will go away. I had a really funny explination about this "ostrich head in the sand" mentality, but I'm assuming no one wants to hear about my dad... so I'm going to skip it.

Anyway.

For the past few weeks, my car would sometimes take a minute to turn over when I started it. Why I didn't bring to to Ryan's attention sooner was beyond me. To be fair, one time he was in the car when it happened and he didn't seem too concerned, so....

So Wednesday afternoon I left work early to hunt down fresh rosemary, get gas, drop off stuff at the Salvation Army, and clean the house (for the impending arrival of my Thanksgiving guests). Two grocery stores later and still no rosemary, I decided to pop by the Salvation Army to drop off my stuff before going to a third grocery store.

The long and short of it: I got out of my car, opened the back door, and got my stuff. I decide at the last minute to shut off my car because if I left it on someone would obviously steal it. I lock the car, walk the 15 steps to the drop off point, drop off my stuff. I walk back to the car. I try to pop the locks (with my key clicker thingy). Nothing. I decide that the battery in my key is dead, so I manually unlock the car. I get in. I insert the key and turn. Nothing. Highly confused, I get out of the car. I get back in. I turn the key again. The needles on all of my dials give a half-assed shiver and lay dead behind their shitty glass cases.

FML.

So I get out of the car again. I have literally no idea what I should do. I briefly acknowledge the irony of my car dying at the drop off point for the Salvation Army before walking over to the guys throwing stuff into a Salvation Army box truck and annoucning to no one in particular "My car won't start". No one looked at me, so I said it again. And just as I was about to turn around, a guy comes out of the back of the truck and said he might be able to help.

One look under the hood showed a massive amount of battery acid corrosion covering about half of my battery. The Salvation Army guy announces that the issue is the connecter on the battry - it's completely corroded and the car can't get enough juice from the battery.

Now at this point, I could go on for another 5-6 minutes. Let's just say that a really nice guy jumped my car, I cried, Ryan met me at Auto Zone, we bought $13 worth of new connecters and flash lights, Ryan changed out the old connecters in the dark parking lot at Auto Zone, the car still wouldn't start, I had to have it jumped so I could at least get home......

And then this morning, when Ryan said "Let's go jump your car so we can drive to Midas so they can fix your car", I said "Why don't we just call AAA to see if they can tow us?"

I called AAA and told them what happened. Within 30 minutes a AAA guy was at our house. Another 30 minutes and I had a new battery, new connectors, and a $100 bill. It was completely worth it.

And it was so much cheaper than that time I ignored my brakes for too long. I want to say that I learned from this; I really do. So let's compromise: I learned that before allowing a man to dump a can of Coke all over the inside of my car to eat the corrosion and before cutting wires under the hood and before allowing my husband to tackle any car repairs that he may not be 100% sure how to do, I WILL CALL AAA.