No Pressure, and Mama's TIREd

One of the most daunting, annoying things to see in a woman's life is that little yellow "TIRE PRESSURE LOW" light flashing on your car's display. This morning in South Florida, the temps had dropped 30 degrees from the usual, so tires everywhere were calling in "sick". "I don't have enough air." " I'm feeling low." "There's not enough pressure in my life." Wah wah wah.

So, the fear instilled by the tires that be forced its way into the already-busy schedule, causing good people everywhere to pull over and find some air. Simple enough, right? Mmmm hmmm.

In this life, one of my biggest nemesis... nemesises? nemeses? nemesi...whatever... is this thing right here... an inanimate object, but an enemy to the most intelligent among us:

If you can find one, great. If it doesn't have an "out of service" sign taped to the front of it, even better! This one actually had a twin, so I was hopeful that one or the other would work. As a public service to my fellow coffee lovers, I'm going to share with you how to add pressure to your tires while adding even more to your blood:

1. Look for 6 quarters, and give up quickly because you will only have those when you don't need them.
2. Rejoice! There's a VISA sign. Now, swipe your debit card. "Place card in chip reader." [Place card in chip reader.] "Chip reader error. Please swipe card." Well, I just did that, but I'll do it again. 
3. "Choose air or vac." [Choose air.] "Authorizing.................." [zzzzzzzzz] "Transaction canceled." 
4. BEGIN AGAIN.
5. Finally get the thing to work after several attempts.
6. Begin adding air (hopefully, you measured the hose from the pump to your car to make sure you parked accordingly and that all 4 tires can be reached.
7. Unscrew all of those caps because you know you forgot, and you only have 4 minutes to get this whole thing done. Time's a tickin'!
8. Now, it's time to play 'Guess the amount of time it takes to fill your tires to the correct PSI.' Start counting... 'one one-thousand, two one-thousand....'
9. Open the car door to look at your display. "Driver car door ajar." Ya think?
10. Roll down window and close car door. Now, look at display again. 
11. Continue filling each tire, alternating with counting and pausing to peek at the display to see if your PSI numbers have been reached.
12. Finish 3 tires before time runs out.
13. Begin at step 1. again so you can pay another $2.00 for 1/4 of a tire's worth of air.
14. Fill up the last tire. 
15. As you place the still-hissing air hose on the handle, sensing the rest of your $2 floating away, notice the sign on the meter that states, "Bell will sound when tire pressure has been reached." Too bad they didn't tell you that in step 8.
16. Choose to vacuum car. We'll save this fiasco for another blog post. Suffice it to say, you'll want to look around to make sure nobody with a phone camera can take a video of you wrestling with the vacuum hose because you didn't park close enough to the other vac because the first one wouldn't work, but you're determined to get your money's worth even if it means sacrificing your already fragile upper back and booking an appointment with a chiropractor and/or orthopedic surgeon. 
17. Drive home on your airy tires.
18. Wait until bedtime and do a load of laundry. Remove jeans from dryer. Remove tire valve caps from dryer, and place those to the side in hopes of getting them back on your tires sometime in the near future, hopefully before you trade in your car for another one.

Oh, and since your blood pressure is now lower because you're not arguing with or wrestling against a feisty air pump anymore, go ahead and treat yourself to a cup of coffee at your nearest Starbucks. You've earned it, TIREd Mama!