His Baby is Dead and I Don’t Have Time For This Crap

If I survive this relocation without a lengthy sentence at in some type of mental health facility, I expect one of you dear readers to send me a tiara and sash proclaiming my superiority. Just when buying and selling house was getting stressful, the Turk decided to throw a little more into the mix to test my stress capacity.

Last week, the Turk totaled his car. Impeccable timing right? (If I keep chanting, don’t kill him, don’t kill him, it will sink in right?) Here in Indianapolis there is an epidemic of something the Hoosiers refer to as potholes. However, these are not what the rest of the world might refer to as potholes. These giant missing chunks of road might best be called sinkholes or craters or most accurately, roadway caverns. According to the news, it seems the city neglected the issue for years and now, as one might expect, all hell is breaking loose creating potholes that can knock out a Beamer in 2.5 seconds flat.

You may recall from an earlier post (Here it is in case you missed it but I’m sure you didn’t because you’re a loyal reader of my brilliance.) that The Turk has an unhealthy obsession with BMWs but regrettably he’s got a Kia budget. To fuel his obsession and keep his marriage in tact, he’s learned to rebuild older Beamers with the patience I only wish he’d use on his offspring. The Turk spends hours creeping around nerd sites on the interwebs where dorks like him share tips and tricks about BMWs and I’m pretty sure it’s a cult.

Last year he lost his first “baby” to mechanical issues that went beyond what a simple Turk can do in a suburban garage. “The Ultimate Machine” has been sitting in my driveway since it’s demise as a sort of metal mausoleum. Each time he passed the molding mass he’d shed a tear. Likewise, each time I passed it, I flipped the car the bird. A few months ago he replaced it with a newer version he procured in some shady deal with a couple African guys. (For real, read all about it here.) While the first one was a death trap, the newer version was the one I wasn’t embarrassed to ride in. Unfortunately, driving to work on one of his last days in this city, he hit one of those geological mine-traps. Moments later my phone rang.

“I think I hurt my baby.”

“What?” I screamed with appropriate maternal panic. “What happened to the kids?”

“What? No! My Beamer. I hit a damn pothole. I hate this place. Why there giant holes in the road everywhere? God sakes! We not have roads this bad in Turkey. ”

-Insert hostile gestures and excessive eye rolling on my end of the line here.

“Can you still drive it or are you stranded somewhere?”

“No. I am driving but my car is making very big noise. It might be bad. I am going to BMW dealership.”

This is the point where my eyes rolled back like a cartoon character and my eyeballs were replaced with dollar signs while the cha-ching of a cash register rang between my ears. Nothing cheap ever happens at a BMW dealership.

Fast forward four days, after fighting a 4-day backlog of poor bastards who’d also lost their “babies” to Hoosier-quality potholes (You thought I was exaggerating how bad these things were.) the mechanic finally called with the damage report. $18,000. The Beamer was down and it was going to take nothing short of $18,000 to fix her.

In the midst of a lab in middle school science, my phone rang. Because it was the Turk, I worried something else had hit the fan so with one hand juggling beakers and a “zip-it” gesture to a bunch of 8^th graders, I picked-up.

“My baby is dead.”

“Huh”

“They say it cost $18,000 to fix my baby.”

It seemed the epic pot-hole had broken the drive-shaft and sent the broken potion of the drive shaft careening through the transmission case and a few other mechanical things I didn’t care enough to comprehend. Thankfully, due to the presence of children not my own at the moment of receiving the information, I suppressed my desire to spew profanity.

It took mere seconds for my firm decision on the matter. “$18,000? Say goodbye girl. That baby is dead.”

When it comes to handling things like insurance or basically anything that requires phone communication, the Turk is out. “I cannot understand what they say on phone. I sound like idiot.” We didn’t do phone communication when we dated for that exact reason. But I get it. I hate to do anything in Turkish on the phone. It’s one hundred times more difficult to comprehend a second language on the phone without being able to see and read body language. So as I drove to pick him up from the dealership I prepared to spend a few hours on the phone cleaning up the mess.

Much to my surprise, faced with the death of his beloved Beamer, the Turk was struck with brilliance. Similar to when adrenaline allows women to commit stunning feats of strength while in mama bear mode, the Turk had already spend an hour on the phone with the insurance company and all was taken care of. “They will send someone to check on my baby Monday. The lady said it is probably over but I can hope. Maybe it is not over yet.”

I wanted to tell him they were sending someone to pronounce his baby dead on Monday but not wanting to watch him weep like a broken fool all weekend, I lied. “You’re right. Maybe they can fix it.” Then, hoping to share my brilliant fix to the situation, I added, “You know, if they can’t fix your car, you can just take my car and we’ll get a new family car. I mean, you only need to commute to the train station. Seems like a perfect solution.”

Through his fog of depression, the Turk glared at me. “How I drive a Hyundai when I am obviously a BMW man?”

Well, they couldn’t fix his baby and and we are now awaiting a payout for the totaled car. Thanks to life in a city without public transport, we are currently sharing joint custody of a 10-year-old Hyundai and it’s not going well. But we’ve got far bigger issues to deal with over the next couple weeks so we’re sucking it up. We’ll get a car on the other side and hopefully both of us will make it out alive.

And that, my friends, was only one incident of drama in the week. There were many others and in the next installment I’ll explain how I bought homeowners insurance on a house I’ve never seen and drove 3 insurance agents to nearly wet themselves from laughter.

If anyone has connections at Bellevue, reserve me a room. It could be touch and go for the next few weeks.

 

Hold On, I’ll Grab My Metal Bra.

For the past few weeks my life has been nothing but anxiety, packing tape and exhaustion. Now that we’ve officially started the epic journey of relocating our family (and cat) from Indiana to Boston, I’ve spent every second I am not working or attending to the task of keeping my offspring alive, packing or painting or pitching or bitching and often it’s all of the above simultaneously. It sucks. Moving sucks. Selling a house sucks. Buying a house sucks. It all just sucks. What sucks more is that by no choice of their own, this has become my kids’ life too.

“Mom, where is my Eagles jersey?”

Sorry buddy, I packed it.

“Mom, where is my blue Nerf gun?”

Sorry buddy, I packed it.

“Hey Mom, I can only find one pair of underwear.”

Oops, perhaps I packed too much.

Due to our familial crap show of late, I owed my dudes a little fun while Baba was out in Boston house hunting. When my dear friend (who I’m about to abandon amid the Hoosiers) suggested we take our male-spawns to Vikingfest, how could I say no?

Full disclosure, I don’t know a lot about vikings. I know they’re scruffy and untamed. (Much like my children.) I know they are surly and hostile. (Again, much like my children.) I know they are all named Thor and usually wear horns on their heads and pigtails. I know they ride boats and like to carve broads with big hooters on the fronts  of said boats and I know that their female counterparts wear metal bras. (I learned that from Elmer Fudd so it’s legit.) But the ad for Vikingfest promised ax throwing, jousting and traditional food and unless it’s a cannibal convention, I’m always in with the phrase “traditional food.” We were in.

After driving past the venue twice, we finally arrived to a giant field with a huge fire burning in the center which I hoped was for viking burials or at least a good virgin sacrifice. (Spoiler alert, we caught neither but we were there during daylight hours so I hold out hope.)  Aside from the fire, the entrance was a bit underwhelming but we were all game for an adventure so we pressed on with hopeful souls.

As we made our way to the “Wolf Petting” (Spoiler alert – it might have been a husky.) we met our first vikings. She wore a metal bra (See, Elmer Fudd IS historically accurate.) and was wrapped in a skimpy but seemingly vikingesque ensemble. Her male counterpart wore horns on his head and was dripping in faux furs. That couple was all I needed and I was 100% in on the adventure. If grown-ass adults are willing to don full costumes on a chilly Sunday morning and commit to this adventure I was down enough to pretend that a husky was a wolf too.

We soon learned that first couple were just an introduction. Down a winding path through the woods, we found a viking village fully stocked with grown-ass adult cosplayers who were so into their roles, they refused to admit their real names were not Asgaut and Esbjorn. I get it. It’s hard to be a pillaging bad-ass named Larry. But that was real commitment.

These modern-day vikings committed to their roles so hard that most had even camped there over the weekend under nothing more than traditional lean tos. I respect commitment but it was 30 degrees that night and there was was a Holiday Inn just down the road – vikings are not a sensible people.

During the hands-on-fashion segment of the experience, one could slip on a nice chainmail top and a festive steele helmut while accessorizing with a throwing axe. Fearing the enticing combination of chainmail and cleavage, I determined my rocking such an ensemble might be too much for the nerd population so I left the fashion segment to Number 1 Son. As a viking supposedly named Asguat but likely named Steve, slipped the chainmail over my son, I waited for his Turkish conqueror genetics to take over. I expected him to embrace his proven link to Genghis Khan. (Fo reals – I heard it on NPR, 98% of all males of Turkish and Arab descent share DNA with Genghis Khan which so explains Nugget.) I hoped for a battle roar and an arm raised in victory. Instead I got, “Ow. Mom, this is heavy. I don’t want to wear it.”  So much for genetics.

Overall I’m pretty nerdy by nature. I’ve got a solid knowledge of all things Star Wars and if an episode of classic Star Trek is on, I’m there. Oh, and don’t expect to see me do anything but bask in the glory of the Christmas Doctor Who marathon. My nerd hand is definitely strong, but I’ve never cosplayed. I mean not since I rocked my Wonder Woman Underooos back in ‘82. I was a professional costume designer for years back in  Philly but it never once crossed my mind to get into this whole world of make believe. However, I’m ridiculously fascinated by the concept of cosplay. What makes these people go all in and what keeps me from joining in the nerddom?

The more weekend warriors we encountered, the more my fascinated grew. Walking around in pelts and a metal bra all day before bedding down on some pine needles and wolf-hides for the night in the middle of suburbia doesn’t call to me. At all. But these people were game-on all weekend long and that’s when I got it.

Vikingfest, just like all the other events that draw cosplayers like moths to flames, are escapes. That chubby dude in the fur tunic sucking on the giant turkey leg is likely an I.T. guy. The only war he wages all week is against people using PASSWORD as their company password. But for one weekend in some unnamed park in the middle of nowhere, he can pretend to be a total badass named Tahvo. Let’s let him have that with respect because tomorrow Tahvo will be the guy saving those files you thought you’d saved while staring over his glasses and scoffing at your stupidity.

If anybody could use an escape from reality right now it’s a full-time working mom at the end of the school year, selling her house while simultaneously buying another 1000 miles away, packing up an entire family (and cat) to move across the country the day school ends. So pass me a metal bra and pour me a drink Tahvo, Brunhilda might be joining you soon!