Commuting is Fun! -tales of vehicular misfortune on the road to mediocrity.

My car is magic. Or cursed. Or there could be a completely rational explanation. Here’s what’s happening: my iPod is hooked up to my car through an FM Transmitter- a fundamental piece of technology for anyone whose car was built before 2003. It works fine- exceptionally in fact- until I reach for my coffee mug. The moment I get my mug out of the cup holder and anywhere between a quarter of the way and halfway to my lips, the transmitter shuts off. I am then faced with the decision to either put my coffee back down and use my one free hand to hold down the power button for an oddly long amount of time to get it to turn back on, or finish the sip (see: gulp) of glorious coffee that I desperately need, all the while missing moments of my podcast (which by the way is the only thing that keeps me up on current events- did you guys hear they killed Bin Laden?) because of course, the iPod won’t stop playing when the transmitter shuts off- that would be too convenient.

Any sensible person will have come up with several solutions by now.

“Just buy a new FM Transmitter” you say? Let’s keep in mind that I am incredibly cheap/moderately poor, and even on Amazon those things are like twelve bucks.

“But Baylee,” you say “couldn’t you just drink your coffee at home, or wait until you’re at work?” The problem here is that along with being cheap/poor I am also really lazy ( I know, I’m getting more attractive by the second you don’t have keep your admiration of me secret) and doing either of those things would require me to get up at least ten minutes earlier every day. Also drinking in the car is what makes driving fun!*

So you can imagine the frustration I go through every morning on my way to work as my desperation for caffeine is pitted against my annoyance at the sound of white noise continuously cutting off one of the Sklar Brothers mid-analogy. Combine this with the underlying ridiculousness that my only problem is the ten inches of air my coffee cup has to travel through to get to my mouth being an apparent magical bubble whose only job is to disturb radio signals.

The point is I was dealing with all of this the way I usually do- by doing my job while keeping it all bottled up inside and smiling at strangers like I imagine a normal person without magical bubbles in their car would do. Then yesterday while I was trying to rig the power button of the transmitter with my Altoids Tin I almost hit a black cat when it ran right across the road in front of me. I have since developed a bit of a twitch.

*I know that sentence is going to be taken out of context. I even took it out of context and I wrote it. But you get me right?