In Which Stealthmobile Grows a Little More Stealthy

Today began gloriously.

First, I slept in till 7am, which may not sound like much in general, but it's just about 3 hours past my normal wake-up time, so I felt incredibly decadent. I'm serious, it really IS lovely to lay around all slothful and unproductive-like while racking up holiday pay. On my days off, I'm SO IN LOVE with my job. Especially if it's a day when the kids still have to go to school: the night before I get all giddy and skip around and ask the boys "Do you have school tomorrow? Yes? THAT'S WONDERFUL!" and they give me dirty looks and imagine the day when I'm old and have completely succumbed to CrazyCatLady Syndrome and they're deciding between the cheap nursing home populated by cockroaches and bedsores or the expensive home, and they fantasize that they'll choose neither and set me adrift on an iceberg surrounded by 86 cats. Which will serve me right for gloating about my dumb day off.

Then, I discovered that Matt Lauer was broadcasting on the Today Show from Anchorage and I nearly leapt into Stealthmobile for a quick (haha) trip to the metropolis until I realized that he was really standing out there 4 hours ago and is probably long gone.

(Did I never tell you about my Matt Lauer lust? I adore him, and I'd love nothing more than to spy his bodacious self and run up to squeeze and fondle him, except of course he's a germaphobe and would probably require a Purell scrubdown to feel clean afterward, but whatevs cause I woulda copped a feel worthy of multiple varied daydreamy scenarios. I'd be Mistress of My Domain for YEARS.)

So. I wasted a lovely morning watching TV (Yay People's Court!) and catching up on the 423,384,926,160,456 blogs I follow and occasionally standing outside the door to Chez Jen with my head cocked, listening for traffic on the half-closed road. But nobody moved the barrier on the other side (I think when I came home last night I interrupted the barrier-movers) so there wasn't much to listen to.

Then, because I want to give at least the illusion of having done something productive, I went to lunch with BFD at India Palace, which I first blogged about here. They have a buffet at lunch, although it's a pretty small selection. I was still super-pleased with myself, because the buffet included aloo gobi, which is my favorite Indian dish EVER.


That's the aloo gobi on the left, and palak paneer on the right.


Naan.

Afterward I blew a bunch of $$$ at the fabric store (more on that project later this week) and returned home in time to bask in the delightful glow of Judge Judy and all the denziens of Chez Jen radiated happiness. Or maybe they were in a heat-stupor, because Vogelzang (my woodstove) has two states of being: dead and difficult to light; or face-meltingly roaring. And since I'm part pyromaniac, I'm over there fiddling with the bellows or poking with the poker and jamming logs in there every eight seconds, lest the fire die out and the temperature dips below 86, so the cats were puddles of too-hot-to-move. I bet they fantasized about setting me adrift on an ice floe too, except theirs probably featured me and the kids drifting away on a vanishing sliver of ice while they seize control of Chez Jen and the surrounding countryside.

But. Then I went to pick up Charles. Also, it was snowing, which is normally no big whoop cause it's Alaska and kind of expected in the winter, but as I turned into the Lil Lambs parking lot Stealthmobile slid a little bit and I realized that the roads were slicker than they looked. And as Chicka and I were waiting at the stop sign to turn onto the main road (and watching the main road drivers slide waaaaaaaaaay past the intersection), we were rear-ended. Clearly, somewhere along the line Stealthmobile veered into TOO-Stealth-mode, which I wouldn't have thought possible, except what other explanation can you come up with for being rear-ended while waiting motionless at a stop sign on a snowy road at dusk? Yeah, exactly: there IS no accounting for it, obviously Stealthmobile is my version of Wonder Woman's invisible plane. (I just wish I could figure out which roll of duct tape holds the golden lasso of truth powers... I'd be over at the Borough offices taping people left and right until I got answers!)

Anyhoo, because Stealthmobile is so stealth, the rear bumper is held on with zipties. Which immediately disintegrated on impact, and so Rear-Ender Gal FREAKED OUT when she saw Stealthmobile's bumper on the asphalt in front of her vehicle, completely ripped off except on one corner. We got out of traffic and examined the damage and I thought Rear-Ender Gal was gonna pee her pants from worry. I'd be willing to bet she's involved in something shady, because she was kind of sketchy about giving me her name and phone number (I didn't bother with asking to see her driver's license or insurance info after I saw her out-of-state plates).

But, none of my lights were damaged, the trunk opened and closed, and so I just yanked the bumper completely off, stuffed it in the trunk, and drove home. Then I reattached it with more zipties. Maybe I should have called the cops and waited around for them to write up 93 other accidents before they showed up here, but whatever. We're all OK, Stealthmobile is as good as new, and I hate waiting.