today was supposed to be simple: school, then car insurance, then maybe DMV trip. all of this overwrote our invitation to see Hope, AJ and John and the girls, of course, along with writing off the barbecue, which I hope was delicious.

What was not delicious was the surpriez groupwork!!1 thrown at me in my last half-hour of class; I loathe group work. I never find it to be a good learning experience. I can use it as a teaching experience, maybe, but that only works if I want to teach at the time. I didn't. And this half-hour, which wasn't even all spent working (show of hands: who actually expected everyone to work straight through to the end of class? yeah, didn't think there were many), had me so supremely unbalanced and off-kilter that I did, in the end, call the teacher and tell her that I cannot be surprised by group work like that. I was very nearly crying at the time I was talking to her, actually, /TP*EURL /KREBLGT.

Fortunately, this school believes in being supportive the way very few other things do (corset companies and some bridge architects, maybe), and so she hastened to reassure me she would offer as much lead-in as she could, and I was always welcome to excuse myself from working in a group and find some other way of reviewing whatever it was we were supposed to review.

Unfortunately, while that helps in future, it didn't do anything to calm me the fuck down. And so I've been on or over the edge all afternoon, making poor Rue's life miserable (and probably her mother's, too). Meanwhile, Rue helped me get a good quote on car insurance this morning, and I can't actually apply for it yet because I don't know an answer about my parents' car insurance and I don't have the VIN for the truck. :|

I called my mother, and left a message, at something like... oh, just under seven hours ago, I'd guess.

More recently I called my father, to get his voice mail right away, and my mother, twice, to get her voicemail after delay and then again right away, and I also called twice to talk to Ben (the guy selling the truck) to find out when we were going to do the paperwork, since apparently it's not legal to sell the license plates along with the vehicle, and there's some pesky law about how your vehicle is supposed to have plates when you drive it around ...

Current projected monthly costs, for my records and if anyone's curious: $45.85/mo or $243 for six months for car insurance with Progressive; the DMV is going to have my ass a few times over, too, with a $20 use fee and a really unclear other charge for plates/registration ... I'm not sure how much because I have no idea what they class the truck's weight as. :|

I also don't know if I want to get commercial plates or passenger; the DMV does a better job of explaining the difference, which is mostly "in the long run, commercial plates are cheaper; in the short run, passenger plates let you stay on the parkways when you're downstate."

I'm just not sure which of those poses a bigger problem.

Other than that, and the fact that Dad and Mom and Ben have all still not called me back and I've been writing this off-and-on for about 45 minutes ... urrgh. I don't even know what to think.

I have no idea if I'm going to have this thing this weekend, although I need it. And I have ... well, far more of an idea, really, but in a negative light, about taking a Saturday trip to Ithaca. It would be fun; it would also be expensive, and I don't have food stamps outstanding in order to pay for my food without cash; I have never driven to Ithaca before in my life, although I think I may have been there once or twice; I should probably get used to the style of once-a-week-or-two stock-up grocery store trips anyway, before attempting to transfer food 300+ miles...

The Nissan is probably going to have fuel economy that is at least as good as the old New Yorker. That doesn't mean it's near as good as the Corolla, and all three of them are blown out of the water by a Prius... so I understand why they like going, and certainly the food that results is far and away the best quality I've met up here outside of, idk, Chez Sophie or whatever – as it goes, though, this Saturday's probably out for us after all.

And at ANY MOMENT, Rue could shake me awake on a Sunday and tell me that she's being judged and pinned to the examining board RIGHT NOW, and then I will flail a lot, try not to freak her out, and hope that she is her normal outstanding self, one of the best trauma assessors in the state (five stars! from the guy who designed the system!), and anyway just like every other time I've told her she'll do great, she'll prove me wrong by being OUTFUCKINGSTANDING instead.

So there.


Apologies for the disjointed nature of this post. I now return you to your regularly scheduled reading list.