Proof Once Again that We are Idiots

We get the GPS for Xmas and we love it, but our mini van does not have one of those cigarette lighter things in it, that you need to plug it into if you are going to make a lengthy trip. It only has one in the way back. Why? I do not know, but there is one way in the back. Well we have used it a couple times and plugged it in the back and then I had to climb in the back and hold it - which makes the whole taking a drive together and talking kind of a waste. So Fat Cat has been trying to install a lighter thing in the front. He got part of it done, after buying all the stuff $$$$$, but he could not figure out how to do the rest. Of course, I am nervous because the van is only 4 years old and we are still making payments and rewiring something could lead to wrong wiring and there could be flames. And Fat Cat is getting frustrated, no good can come from that. Tank is usually my saving grace in these cases as he can usually just do this stuff and therefore Fat Cat is not let loose with dangerous items like wire cutters. But it has been below zero degrees and Tank’s jeep is taking up the garage, leaving this work to be done out in the elements, and Tank keeps putting it off. Fat Cat who will not do anything when any one else wants it done, has been freaking out because he wants this done now (there could be traveling being done) , and keeps trying to get Tank to do it. He could wait no longer. He grabs a neighbor and during the heat wave of 16 degrees this weekend he does manage to get this done. Now, I, the chronic worrier have internally convinced myself that the heat going out in the van was directly related to this issue, and have been chewing bitterly on how it cost me like $100 to have this stupid van fixed from something that Fat Cat probably did putting in the GPS for trips we will never take and can’t afford. So my anger is getting all stirred up and even though the van is fixed I absolutely refuse to go see the new lighter plug that is positioned near the passenger seat, my seat, so I can work the stupid thing. Now at the same time this is brewing, Fat Cat has missed placed his cell phone (which by the way is really is mothers, she got a new one and still had this one, and since they charge you like one hundred thousand dollars to break your contract, she just let Fat Cat use it.) He is looking, looking, and cannot find it. So today, in desperation, after he had to tell his mother (who is on vacation in Florida in a condo, hate her) that he has lost the phone, and waited like a four year old for her to scream at him for being so incredibly stupid and irresponsible, which did not happen but might as well have, because he feels it should have. Anyway, he goes out and completely cleans the van out, in search of the phone. He has tons of junk in the van, from tools, to fast food trash, to empty cigarette packs. He has been working overtop a lot of this while putting in the stupid lighter thing, but refuses to clean it out because ’it is too f$%^ng cold’.

I get home from work and Fat Cat says, ’you gotta sit down I have to tell you something.’
‘Oh my God,’ I say, but on the inside, I am thinking, what the hell has happened now.
‘You know how I put the plug in the van?’
‘yes,’ I say , but on the inside I am thinking, here it comes, he is about to confess that he has ruined something in the van that I am still paying on.
‘Well when I was cleaning it out today.’
‘Yes,’ I hear it coming, he probably has burned some wire that makes the whole van run.
‘I found the cigarette lighter.’
‘OK,’ probably about 30 of them, I am thinking, because they were probably lost in the mess.
‘We have had one up front this whole time.’
“What?” now I have been in the van a lot, I have drove it, I have traveled in it. The kids have drove it. There is not a cigarette lighter in it.
‘Right below the cup holders.’
‘No. I got to see this!!’ I don’t even put my coat on and charge out into the subzero.
I push the cup holders in but still can’t see it.
‘You gotta lean way down.’
I climb over the seat and look under the cup holder area, and there tucked back in the center part of the van, is a cigarette lighter plug and a little cubby hole. Never knew it was there. Four years. Never noticed it.

PS. We got a call from Mom in Florida, her husband found the phone in her car!! Fat Cat had borrowed it when the van was down and he had a doctor appointment. Go figure.