Recipe for disaster

I guess I was due.
First, make sure it's payday, and you have just enough money to cover the essential bills. Then run to town and do all your running around. Take the middle and the baby chicken. Make your 1:00 pm appointment. And at the local Taco Bell, make sure your van dies, and the battery light goes on. Panic for five minutes while trying to restart it, and use your hazard lights. Van starts. Then run to Sonic because you KNOW your poor van will be fine. Die again. More battery lights.
Drive like a crazy woman to Autozone and tell them of your auto woes. Autozone tells you it's the alternator. Price-$129. You think back and are SURE you had a new alternator put on about a year and a half ago. Take a deep breath and tell them you'll buy a new one. Kind associate will go and take the battery off of the van to charge it so you can at least freakin' make it home. Oh...and make sure baby chicken doesn't feel well. Her head should be hot, and she should have trouble staying awake. Autozone people tell you it will take 45 minutes for your battery to charge. You wander across the street to the laundromat to use the pay phone to let everyone know you're okay. Get busy signal. Five times in a row. Baby chicken will be semi-comatose on the bench outside the laundromat. You shell out $7 for middle chicken to entertain herself with those pick'n'grab machines.
50 minutes later (you don't want to go back to soon) you head back across the street to Autozone. Lo and behold! Your battery won't take a charge. You've just spent 45 minutes of your day studying cracks in the sidewalk for nothing.
Buy new battery. $55 bucks beats the hell out of $129. Autozone person puts battery back in. You dance. Go back through the Taco Bell drive-in feeling sassy. Oh yes, and you're low fuel light MUST be on. This is imperative. Of course, between the battery light and the low fuel light, I know which I consider more important.
After Taco Bell, head to bait store, because BY GOD, you are torturing some damn minnows when you get home. Leave car running, and let middle chicken go get minnows. Baby chicken is now REALLY unconscious in back of car. You're serenaded with snores. And guess what? Off goes the van, on comes the battery light.
Panic sets in. Not the little creeping kind, either. It's the full-blown, everybody take cover kind. Restart the van and head BACK towards town. Put gas in van and call the house. Be assured that somehow you will obtain an alternator the next day. Be very, very numb.
After arriving at your house, baby chicken heads straight to bed. You contact place that put alternator on in May 2003. They bought it under their name. Warranty? Um...they don't know. They don't keep the damn records. Call O'Reilly's. Get the runaround there, too. Look up Better Business Bureau because someone will be missing part of their ass once you have your wits about you. Be prepared to eat the expense for a new alternator after buying one a year and a half ago.
Your eyes begin to cross. You vaguely remember sitting on the couch staring dazedly into space. Lay down at 8:00 pm with intentions of sleeping the rest of this jacked-up day away. Wake up at 9:30 pm and can't go back to sleep.
Log on the Internet at 11:00 pm and share your woes with the world.
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