Behold! My Super Human Strength!!!

Or, how my car occasionally smells money.

Tuesday after work, The Kid and I had to stop by the local Walgreens for some laundry soap and milk. As I moved to get out of the car, something incredible happened. I was apparently mystically tranformed into a superhero at some point during the day. Perhaps it was the leftovers I'd eaten for lunch, as if one of my insurance-worker-by-day-mad-scientist-by-night co-workers had sprinkled with some super titanium radioactive chemical X on my keilbasa and potatoes, and during the afternoon, I developed unknown strength. Because when I opened the car door, with the strength of 500 Jamie Summerses, I ripped the handle clean off of the door.

Stunned, I stood to get out of my car and did what every completely idiotic person would do, which was to try and fit the handle back into the space from whence it had been ripped. I turned to The Kid, who was already out of the car, and showed him the impotent door handle. The Kid just looked at me and said, "Whoa, mom! You just broke your car!"

So, for the past few days, I've had to either climb out of my passenger door, or make The Kid get out of the car first and open my door for me. The former made me feel like a complete idoit and one time I think I pulled something in my butt muscles. The latter, however, got impressed looks from passersby, who were thinking, "Now there's a young gentleman, opening a car door for his mother. Chivalry, good sir, is not dead."

The story doesn't end particularly well. My superhuman strength is now apparently gone. I also found that the door handle is not one of the more expensive parts of a car, as it cost only about .02% of the original cost of my car to replace. I did, however, find out that my brakes were within 2 millimeters of certain death, and so I had to replace them.

So, I dropped $400 on my car today, which is no small sum to me. I swear to you that my car knows when I get a tax return, it knows when I have a bonus coming. It can smell income like dogs and bees can smell fear. Last time I got a bonus, my front passenger tire blew, and so because it was well beyond time to replace the suckers, I dropped $200 of my $600 of bonus on new tires. The car freaks me out honestly. I just knows.