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Folks, I have had A Day. It’s not all Tumblr Discourse-related, either. (I know. I have a life offline. It’s okay, I try to forget about it too.)
so my dude has one of those illegal VWs. You know, the ones with the completely illegal exhaust systems that were designed to cheat. Yup.
He bought this thing in 2011, I think. Sick of replacing cars, he figured, I’ll buy a VW TDI and drive it into the ground over the course of the next 15 years! It’ll be swell. Those things routinely go over 200k miles. And he was religious about the maintenance. Rarely drove it. Babied it. It was a great car.
And totally illegal, and of course, now that they’ve been revealed as total frauds, worthless. He’d just paid the thing off. I had a newish car. We were really, seriously budgeting on not replacing that VW for a long time. We were thinking about buying a house.
I know. Like we’re some kind of bourgeousie oh my god I can’t spell that. I give up. You know. That. Whatever that is. Like we’re aspiring to baby boomerhood or something. The kinds of people who have nice things. Pff.
Anyway. So this has been hanging over our heads for months. What’s going to happen? Will VW cripple the car so it’s legal? (It would involve a fix that removes most of the car’s horsepower.) Will VW give us money? Will we have to sell the thing for like, no money? What?
Today they announced the settlement, so I was on tenterhooks while he puzzled through the wording.
And it’s a lot. They’re giving him a lot. Enough, basically, to buy a different, not as fancy, not illegal car, basically in cash. So we won’t be stuck under another five years of car payments. So that’s cool.
I hate car shopping, but he thinks it’s sort of fun, so he’s kind of okay with this. And it is a lot of money. Like, about 25% more than he had been optimistically expecting. So that’s cool.
#2 thing of the day, though, was that I finally confronted my calendar and logistics, and I am going to miss our 15th anniversary. For the 4th of July holiday in 2002, right after I graduated college, my middle-little sister was going down to the Jersey Shore to visit some friends, and I convinced her to give me a lift to Jersey City and drop me off to visit this guy I’d met over the Christmas break senior year through a mutual friend (he came up to visit and got snowed in, it was tropetastic, but I DID NOT BANG HIM and SHOULD HAVE because I had a long-distance not-relationship with a guy who would totally not have cared if I had, and who in fact would have thumbs-upped me, and why did I not, I had been kicking myself for six months but then I wasn’t sure if he’d actually wanted to or what, I may have mentioned I’m sort of bad at this sort of shit and it turns out he was even worse), and who I’d been corresponding with ever since, and who I was determined to either bang, or find out once and for all wasn’t interested (which was more usual– I’d think someone was flirting and they’d be horrified to discover this. that had been my “dating” M.O. for like, my whole life. and he’d been like, yeah! come visit me that’d be so great! and had been incredibly devastatingly witty via email! but i still Wasn’t Sure, you know?).
My friends, I banged him, and it was, well, it was complicated, but it went much better in the end than it had any right to. Even though it meant I lived in Jersey City for like, six months. (More? I forget.) I did not sleep on that couch I’d given him when I moved out of college one time. (Oh gosh, I am sitting on it now, and it is even uglier now than it was then, but it’s kind of our origin story, kind of– he visited a second time to get it, and also got stranded, and I also did not bang him then, I had totally forgotten, but in case anyone thinks I am suave, I am Not Suave.)
And it has been 15 years, as of this coming week. And I am booked to go slaughter chickens at that time, and he is working here. So. Alas.
He has agreed to take a rain check and go do something cool. We have now been together long enough that if NY State recognized common-law marriage, we’d be married twice, with room to have divorced in the middle.
So I don’t know what cool thing to do, but we’re going to. I don’t know.
I want, as a palate-cleanser after The Day (there was more, it’s not worth getting into, I am So Tired), to just, I dunno, post some fluffy cute fic that someone might like. But I don’t know that I have any. And I have Deadlines, dear friends. I have deadlines. Wednesday that first chapter of The Untitled Menace is going up and I have to finish it. I’m close! But I ahve to finish it. And then Thursday is the deadline for the Three Worlds thing, and I have a sacred calling to write Raksura smut, and I just. I mean. I wrote most of it. But it’s not done.
SO. Alas. I wish I were cool. I would post something cool. I am not that cool. I am having A Day wherein I am keenly aware that I am not and never will be that cool.
But if I were cool. IF I WERE COOL. Things would be different around here.
(I may have had a bit of scotch just now. Don’t worry. Dude is cooking dinner. I bought cheesecake yesterday at the grocery store and so there will be dessert too. Past Me is a real pal.)
Folks, I have had A Day. It’s not all Tumblr Discourse-related, either. (I know. I have a life offline. It’s okay, I try to forget about it too.)
so my dude has one of those illegal VWs. You know, the ones with the completely illegal exhaust systems that were designed to cheat. Yup.
He bought this thing in 2011, I think. Sick of replacing cars, he figured, I’ll buy a VW TDI and drive it into the ground over the course of the next 15 years! It’ll be swell. Those things routinely go over 200k miles. And he was religious about the maintenance. Rarely drove it. Babied it. It was a great car.
And totally illegal, and of course, now that they’ve been revealed as total frauds, worthless. He’d just paid the thing off. I had a newish car. We were really, seriously budgeting on not replacing that VW for a long time. We were thinking about buying a house.
I know. Like we’re some kind of bourgeousie oh my god I can’t spell that. I give up. You know. That. Whatever that is. Like we’re aspiring to baby boomerhood or something. The kinds of people who have nice things. Pff.
Anyway. So this has been hanging over our heads for months. What’s going to happen? Will VW cripple the car so it’s legal? (It would involve a fix that removes most of the car’s horsepower.) Will VW give us money? Will we have to sell the thing for like, no money? What?
Today they announced the settlement, so I was on tenterhooks while he puzzled through the wording.
And it’s a lot. They’re giving him a lot. Enough, basically, to buy a different, not as fancy, not illegal car, basically in cash. So we won’t be stuck under another five years of car payments. So that’s cool.
I hate car shopping, but he thinks it’s sort of fun, so he’s kind of okay with this. And it is a lot of money. Like, about 25% more than he had been optimistically expecting. So that’s cool.
#2 thing of the day, though, was that I finally confronted my calendar and logistics, and I am going to miss our 15th anniversary. For the 4th of July holiday in 2002, right after I graduated college, my middle-little sister was going down to the Jersey Shore to visit some friends, and I convinced her to give me a lift to Jersey City and drop me off to visit this guy I’d met over the Christmas break senior year through a mutual friend (he came up to visit and got snowed in, it was tropetastic, but I DID NOT BANG HIM and SHOULD HAVE because I had a long-distance not-relationship with a guy who would totally not have cared if I had, and who in fact would have thumbs-upped me, and why did I not, I had been kicking myself for six months but then I wasn’t sure if he’d actually wanted to or what, I may have mentioned I’m sort of bad at this sort of shit and it turns out he was even worse), and who I’d been corresponding with ever since, and who I was determined to either bang, or find out once and for all wasn’t interested (which was more usual– I’d think someone was flirting and they’d be horrified to discover this. that had been my “dating” M.O. for like, my whole life. and he’d been like, yeah! come visit me that’d be so great! and had been incredibly devastatingly witty via email! but i still Wasn’t Sure, you know?).
My friends, I banged him, and it was, well, it was complicated, but it went much better in the end than it had any right to. Even though it meant I lived in Jersey City for like, six months. (More? I forget.) I did not sleep on that couch I’d given him when I moved out of college one time. (Oh gosh, I am sitting on it now, and it is even uglier now than it was then, but it’s kind of our origin story, kind of– he visited a second time to get it, and also got stranded, and I also did not bang him then, I had totally forgotten, but in case anyone thinks I am suave, I am Not Suave.)
And it has been 15 years, as of this coming week. And I am booked to go slaughter chickens at that time, and he is working here. So. Alas.
He has agreed to take a rain check and go do something cool. We have now been together long enough that if NY State recognized common-law marriage, we’d be married twice, with room to have divorced in the middle.
So I don’t know what cool thing to do, but we’re going to. I don’t know.
I want, as a palate-cleanser after The Day (there was more, it’s not worth getting into, I am So Tired), to just, I dunno, post some fluffy cute fic that someone might like. But I don’t know that I have any. And I have Deadlines, dear friends. I have deadlines. Wednesday that first chapter of The Untitled Menace is going up and I have to finish it. I’m close! But I ahve to finish it. And then Thursday is the deadline for the Three Worlds thing, and I have a sacred calling to write Raksura smut, and I just. I mean. I wrote most of it. But it’s not done.
SO. Alas. I wish I were cool. I would post something cool. I am not that cool. I am having A Day wherein I am keenly aware that I am not and never will be that cool.
But if I were cool. IF I WERE COOL. Things would be different around here.
(I may have had a bit of scotch just now. Don’t worry. Dude is cooking dinner. I bought cheesecake yesterday at the grocery store and so there will be dessert too. Past Me is a real pal.)
