People magazine has named Adam Levine the Sexiest Man Alive. For years now I have hypothesized that People uses a forgiving, perhaps even dubious definition of the word "sexy". And now I realize they do for "man" as well.

That feeling of dread.


It's that time of the year. Supposedly the most wonderful.

I've been at the mecca store which is filled to bursting with people buying things no one needs, trying to shop off a list that is sometimes too specific, sometimes too vague:

princess sticker book - check

20" plush tiger wearing apron - ?

oven-to-table corningware - check

something that will really knock his socks off but cost less than $50 - ?

A chunk of my life I can never get back floats by. I am at the densely-packed front of the store, my cart heaped with things I'll question later, trying not to maim anyone with unwieldly tubes of wrapping paper. I pick the line that seems the shortest but takes the longest. I have ample time to read all the headlines, resist all the impulses, and check out the latest in gum. I am overheating in my coat, and trying to keep my scarf out of the puddles melting off other people's boots.

I reach the cashier with time. She is wearing a vest, and weariness. Palpable weariness that smells like canned soup and cardboard. I don't mean to make her bad day worse, but the little slot in my wallet between my license and my points cards is empty. I perform an archaelogical dig down to the bottom of my purse, and then back up again, all to no avail. My card is missing. Heart in throat. People in line behind me look on with about as much sympathy as Kanye feels for the papparazzi.

Today I am that woman.

Annual holiday tradition of losing my debit card - check.

I did a dumb thing.
I was driving in to work when a heard a weird noise that I supposed was coming from my own car.
I immediately turned down the radio and diagnosed the noise as "not enginey".
I slowed down a touch but the noise seemed to increase. I wondered if perhaps the passenger door wasn't closed tight.
Then I felt my car pulling slightly to the right, hard little tugs on the wheel.
Uh oh.
I slowed down, way down, put on my four-ways and crawled along, unable to pull over because I was on the parkway, basically a shoulder-less miniature highway, but desperate to pull over because now I was hearing a metallic scraping noise that I further diagnosed as "not good" and "possibly the muffler?" because I know 2 things about mufflers: they fall off, and when they do, shit gets loud.
I pulled over as soon as it was humanly possible and called Sean.
"My car is fucked. It might be the muffler."
I was so proud to offer this little tidbit.
I got out of the car and went around the back to see if I could see anything metallic and draggy.
New diagnosis: "It's the tire."
It was TOTALLY the tire.
It wasn't flat. It was just a flabby piece of rubber that no longer had a relationship with the rim. None whatsoever. It has completely shredded and separated from the rim, and that's what I'd been driving on. I'd left a trail of rubber pieces behind me. My tired was now a one-thousand piece puzzle.
Aha!
It's the tire! And no, this isn't even the dumb part. Stay with me.

I called up my lawyer and told him I needed a tire change, and even though he's usually a desk guy, he came and got dirt all over his good pants. He changed it in record time too - probably because he had a crowd of onlookers, the kind with gray hairs sprouting out of their ears, who had lots to say about the whole rigmarole. Spare tire on, I was able to finally get to work, testing the big yellow warning sticker that seemed to be under the impression that doing under 80km\hr was a good idea. Bah.

Anyway, turns out the rim was amazingly undamaged, but because the universe doesn't really work that way, I had damaged both the emergency brake line, and the plastic casing on a shock. So into the shop went my car. A couple of days later, I ransomed her back for about a grand. Happy (enough) ending.

Sean drove me to the mechanic where we picked up my car and then each drove home separately, me in a hurry (because without a big yellow sticker, I could drive like I had a pulse, and also because I had to pee. Bad), Sean in a more meandering way since he had a couple of errands to run.

I got home, and as usual, I parked in the garage. The only time I don't park in the garage is when I'm low on gas and I leave my little Ruby in the driveway as a friendly reminder for my live-in gas attendant to go fill'er up. Since she had a full talk, I pulled Ruby into the garage and scurried into the side door, trying to decide if it would be quicker to run down the stairs to the downstairs bathroom, or up the stairs to the upstairs one. But wait! Foiled! Garage door is locked! Garage door is locked? This never happens. This never happens because I leave out the garage door in the morning, which means I unlock it but only close it behind me. I don't even know if we have a key that unlocks the garage. Today was an aberration because I didn't leave by the garage door - Sean and I had to carpool in, and he always parks in the driveway. Shit. I back my car out of the garage, and walk up the porch to the front door, which is also locked, of course. So begins the big search through the big purse. Root root root, no key. Sit down, take things out of purse, no key. Unzip zippers, turn out the lining, no key. When have I last seen this key? No idea. I never unlock anything. Sean has a key, I have a Sean, plus a garage door. What do I need a key for? Now that I think about it, I'm sure I never transferred my house key to this purse. But I don't remember seeing it in the last purse. So the last time I even had a key on me was at least 3 purses ago at the very least.

If you're wondering: yes, this is the dumb thing.

So I can't get into the house. Fine. I can sit and wait in the car.
Except there's still the matter of me having to pee.
Bad.
Can I pee in the garage?
It's private and it's warm, but it's also the garage. There's a drain, I think, but it's basically an extension of the house and it feels a bit weird to just pee on the floor. And then I'd have to hose it down. There's a recycle bin in the garage, maybe I can pee in a jar? But I don't want to go dumpster diving, blue bin or no. And then what do I do with the jar? I guess then it would technically be half-recyclable, and half-compostable. I guess I'd just have to go dump it out in the backyard...
Maybe better to cut out the middle man and pee in the backyard. It's fenced, I'd be more protected and there's no danger of Sean pulling into the driveway and the door lifting up to reveal his squatting, trickling wife. And no need to aim for the tiny opening of a Snapple bottle.
I let myself into the yard by the gate and begin to rethink my logic - yes the yard is fenced, but the houses are built on hills, and multi-storied, so if you're on the top floor, you've actually got a great view down into the yards, fence or no fence.
But there's no time to reconsider!
Pee. Bad!
So I wedge myself between the hot tub and the house, as sheltered as it gets, and let go. Ahhhhhhhh.  People are probably too busy making their dinner for a prolonged look out the window anyway. Right?
Figuring I was half naked anyway, I thought I may as well pass the time until my rescue in the hot tub. Which was a swell idea, daylight nakedness notwithstanding, for the first 20 or 30 minutes. But then between the heat and the sun, I soon because to realize I wasn't so much "relaxing in the hot tub" as "slowly simmering". Thankfully, just as I was leaving grape territory for raisinhood, my saviour with a key ring arrived and we all lived happily ever after.

The end.