Gas Lighting

During my amnesia therapy, it was widely suspected that Hubs and his birth family are major league gas lighters. Vehicle yaddahs are the place where I believe I feel it the most. Way back when Hubs was just a cute neighbor, my being a female engineering student was a turn on for him. A year or so into the marriage, the water pump broke on our car. Based on prior conversations, I expected him to take the infant from my arms so that I could fix the car. Instead he "manned-up" and sponsored a week from hell which left the baby and I cowering in a corner while he . . . went manly? A year or three later, I was working city fleet maintenence, driving and working on every type of vehicle in city service, while hubs and his father declared me incompetent to drive their pick-up trucks. That part of our marriage has been and remains a puzzling phenom.

I mark the most recent round as starting with the dispatch of his father's nursing sugar mamas. The head nurse got his mother's caddilac. Nobody loved it, anyway. The second nurse wanted his father's luxury pick-up. Trigger city. . . Add in the bureauratic maze of attempting to transfer car titles when the owner is not available to sign and the my gentle poet once more turned into an irrational raving maniac. Despite his claims of innocent perfection, I believe he is still raving.

I left Texas in the least popular vehicle in the family fleet in hopes of not stirring the man clan testosterone. It is the pick-up truck hubs and eldest son bought in a manly ritual I kept as far from as physics would allow. I am in the habit of naming the vehicles I drive. I call this one, "Boy Toy." Boy Toy spent more time in the driveway than on the road until I used him in my covert get-away. The cover worked until the registration came due for renewal this month. Always something with cars, huh? The renewal process is greatly complicated by the 1800 miles between the vehicle and the bureauracrats who hold the validating sticker. It is further complicated by the fact that my name is not on the registration. The literal sticky has met our domestic sticky and turned into the most brutal topic of his visit here. I feel like I am swimming in the wake of the Exxon Valdez which spilled and became my father-in-law's icon around the time I nearly divorced the entire Exxon family in 1989. I reunited with hubs, but in my mind, the FIL is still the Captain of the Valdez, even after death. I can rebuild a scrap vehicle more efficiently than I have been able to discuss the details of renewing the registration on Boy Toy with my testosterone pumped poet. In my own strictly personals, the only time I like pick-up trucks is when I have a mid-sized load to haul. They aren't good for much else. Let the tool fit the job. I don't park my personal image in the driveway.

In my strictly personal psycho baggage car, I have a shitload of psycho kinks from the "non-traditional" aspects of being a natural engineer with organic teats. Itty bitty ones too small to sag, but capable of producing milk, nonetheless. The chaotic din of those puppets in my head are in what I call, "The Dumb Broad Show." There is zero doubt that my dumb broad aspects show up mightily in this oft-gaslighted series of events. As much as I would love to surgically remove the ditzy bitch and her entire supporting cast, I am stuck with her.

At present my reflex is to give Boy Toy back to the name on his registration and head to the watersheds on foot. Alas, the name on the registration doesn't have the time in his busy schedule to drive back to Texas.

Sorting. . .