I See It As Half Full

When I was rushing around Monday to gather stuff for our casino trip with my sister the ex-mayor's wife, I asked Hick if A-Cad was clean. You know, because Hick is a sneak-sweaver. He takes A-Cad to the auction, or on Goodwill tours, thinking I won't find out.

It's not that I mind if Hick drives A-Cad. Even though that car was bought to be mine, and Hick has the Trailblazer and Ford F250 and 1980 Toronado in his driving stable. As with everything else, Hick mainly wants something just because it's MINE.

Like in the kitchen this afternoon, when he could have scooped his ice cream on the kitchen counter nearest FRIG II, or on the cutting block right by the freezer door...yet he carried that tub of ice cream over to the one spot on the counter where I'd been writing in the checkbook and had stepped away for a moment. When asked WHY, he threw up his hands (poparm included) and had a hissy-fit and shoved the ice cream back into FRIG II and said he'd wait until I went to town. Because that was so much easier, you know, than giving an answer.

Anyhoo...on Monday, I'd first asked if A-Cad had any gas left, since I suspected Hick had been up to his Hickness again. We last drove it to the casino the first week of March, and filled it up on the way home, and as far as Hick thinks I know...A-Cad has been sitting in the garage ever since then. Hick did, however, in a lapse of secretiveness, admit that there was less than a quarter tank, and we'd need to stop for gas.

THEN I asked if A-Cad was clean. On the inside. Hick has a habit of tossing his empty Diet Mountain Dew bottles onto the floor of whatever car he's driving. And we keep a trash bag in A-Cad for those Oklahoma trips. Also, Hick buys flea market and Goodwill stuff and lets it sit on the back seat.

"Yes. The car is clean."

"Okay. Because you know Sis. I don't want it to be a mess with them riding back there."

"It's clean, Val."

"Do we need to take a fresh trash bag? Oh, wait! We have that little collapsible wastebasket I found. It probably needs to be dumped. There's a Walmart bag on the cutting block."

"All right."

Hick went out to make sure there was none of his stuff inside A-Cad. Not because he admitted to it, but because I insisted. Even though he'd said if there was, he'd just put it over in T-Hoe when we left.

I came out of the bathroom to see Hick standing all passive-aggressively, leaning over the back of the long couch. I don't know what that was all about. You'd think he was the boss with a stopwatch, timing my break. We went outside, and Hick backed A-Cad out of the garage while I was giving the dogs some cat kibble. I walked through the garage and almost succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning. It would appear that Hick is not only gaslighting me, but also trying to GAS me!

"Did you have the car running with the garage door closed?"

"Yes. I was warming it up."

"That's not very smart. And it's not very warm. I'm freezing! Why didn't you turn on my seat heater?"

"I did. It's on."

Yes. It was. But I continued to freeze all the way to town. I glanced down and saw that the fan was on the ZERO setting. Not even blowing! I turned up about 1/3 of the way on the dial. Hick immediately pushed the AUTO button. Which turned off the fan.

"Why did you do THAT? I'm trying to get some heat!"

"Well, you have to put it ON something. Like HEAT."

"So putting it on AUTO will turn on the heat? But not the fan?"

"It will make it heat to the temperature on the thermostat."

SOOOO...all this time, about 15 minutes of driving to town, plus the warm-up time running in the garage...A-Cad's heat hadn't even been on. Because Hick had not turned it on.

THEN, while sitting at Casey's while Hick put gas in the tank, I reached back to throw away a peanut butter cracker wrapper (Val does not live by TREET half-sandwich alone), and jammed my hand into a pile of trash in the mini collapsible wastebasket! You can bet Hick heard about THAT when he got back in.

"I told you to dump the wastebasket! You had plenty of time while I was in the bathroom, but you just turned on the car and came in to act all put-out from waiting on me."

"There's no need to dump the wastebasket. It's HALF EMPTY!"

"No. It's HALF FULL! Now Sis and the ex-mayor are going to see all of our trash."

"They're not even going to notice it. You'd complain if you were hung with a new rope."

Huh. Like we ever have anything NEW around here! We picked up Sis and Ex-Mayor. They climbed in and stuffed their jackets between the bucket seats.

"I hope you two don't have armloads of trash, because our little wastebasket is HALF FULL!"

They marveled over that little wastebasket. "Oh, where'd you get this? I'd like to have one. It even has Velcro on the bottom so you can stick it down!"

Then I saw Ex-Mayor reach into the mini wastebasket and sift through my peanut butter cracker wrapper. I don't know what that was all about. Just curiosity, I guess. But I called it.