Friday night I’ve promised to attend the burlesque debut of @BeingCharlee. Flawed Memory is also supposed to go. He offers for the two of us to ride together since parking will be limited. The plan is for me to drop my daughter off at her pool birthday party, and he’ll pick me up at 8:30.

At 8:30, my phone rings. FM’s car won’t start. So I offer to go pick him up and drive us to the show. This should be easy, right?

As I’m driving out the Parkway, I get this feeling that this Friday the 13^th isn’t going to end well. FM’s car won’t start. Social Diva is at a pool party. I’m going out on a Friday (i.e., “Mom”) night (which is rare for me). I try to shake off the feeling as I reach my exit.

And then it happens. As I’m driving through the empty section of parking lot, I don’t see the concrete section/curb jutting out until it’s too late. I wasn’t playing with my phone, but I was searching the parking lot for the broken down car. The grassy area didn’t have a light pole or tree (which was pointed out to me later). I swerved at the last minute, but my front passenger side tire hits and goes up over the curb. Thinking I had damaged my front bumper, I immediately pull over into a parking spot to check for damage and find an immediately flat tire. [I had just purchased these new tires one month ago and DIDN’T get the road hazard!]  FM helps change my tire and guess what? The spare has barely any air! Not only am I ready to burst into tears, I’m ready to scrap my plans for the night. Since we both said we were coming to the debut, he reassures  me that everything will be ok and we head back into town. Fortunately, the spare holds the air while we were at the venue and throughout the night.

Fast forward to Saturday morning. I have to drive Vampire Boy to work. The plan is then to take FM to try to start his car which we were able to do by “popping the clutch.” We head to Wal Mart so I can check into whether my tire is salvageable (it wasn’t) and whether they can look at his car (they couldn’t).  There goes $100 I didn’t need to spend to replace the tire.

This wasn’t how I planned on spending the weekend before returning to work after my staycation!

A woman’s rule of thumb: If it has tires or testicles, you’re going to have trouble with it!