Dead battery.

My car died today in the parking lot outside Nail Tide, where Al and I had just got pedicures, and Palm Beach Tan, where I had just gotten a spray tan. As I stood in the hot, humid parking lot, sweat accumulating in my hairline and dripping down my back (undoubtedly ruining my developing spray tan), it occurred to me that I'm not necessarily ready for summer. For warm weather and sunshine, yes. For the nearly unbearable, unbreathable Southern summer, not so sure. You can beat the heat lounging in the pool or cruising on the lake, but at the end of the day you have to get into your car and take yourself home. My car, for one, turns in an inferno even on cooler summer days. In the dead of summer, it's intolerable. The air is unbreathable, the seats scorching hot, and my shirt sticks to my back where I'm sweating profusely from the hot leather (wearing sweaty or wet clothes is possibly the worst feeling ever). Outside of my car, I'm just a sweater. Period. From mid-May to mid-September you will rarely see my hair down from a pony-tail because, outside of the humidity-driven frizziness, my hair is baby fine and the first drops of sweat soak through it until I look like I've just ran a marathon (if only). Truly, I can't walk from the front door to the mailbox without needing to blow dry my bangs.

On top of my car being dead this afternoon, my phone was quickly dying and Alice didn't have her phone. Not that a fresh batteried phone would have mattered as my daddy and my boyfriend-- my champions and knights-in-shining-armor-- were not taking my phone calls. Luckily, my sweet friend Justin just happened to be walking out of Swen, a Chinese restaurant in the same strip mall parking lot where I was stranded, and he came to my rescue. Well, I should say that his fraternity brother Trent did. Justin, fully clad in frat-boy style: long-sleeved Polo button-up, shorty Columbia shorts, Chacos, and Costas, knows little to nothing about cars. He did, however, provide jumper cables and his friend provided the needed knowledge of positive-to-positive and negative-to-negative.

At the end of the afternoon, after having blown off Alice mom and Jane for lunch because my car made us about an hour late, I left the parking lot sweaty and irritated. I have yet to recover. Today is not my day.