How To Fill Your Gas Tank Without Filling It.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who was going to a writer's conference and was a little bit late. She blew out of bed—after sleeping through her alarm because she was a tired mom who could never hit the hay while her little people were out and about in the night. She could only sleep once they all came home and were safely tucked into their wee beds—ran to the gym, ran in the gym, blew back home, then remembered it was St. Patrick's day and they had that whole St.-Patrick's-Day-Dinner-With-The-Extended-Family thing that night. For which she had committed to baking Irish Soda Bread (2 loaves), and crockpotting that weird only-good-once-a-year cut of meat called "Corned Beef" (which she supposes is gleaned from the little herds of corned beef that dot the foothills near her home) and is made eversomuch better with the addition of cabbage. All before she left for her conference of writers.

SO, the little girl slammed into the shower, struggled into her Writer-Girl clothes (which involved several outfit combinations tried on in front of the full length mirror for which there was only 2 feet of space in the master bath. So the girl enjoyed a severely foreshortened reflection, and often wore strange vestments as a result without knowing it), shellacked her hair, and ran into the kitchen.

There, the little girl corned the beef, sliced the cabbage, added carrots and potatoes to make up for the cabbage, drowned it all in a slurry of apple juice, water, garlic, and secret herbs, turned on the crockpot, delegated the soda bread to her kid, and flew out the door into her car. And since she had 4 minutes to spare, the little girl blew back into the house because she forgot her keys, blew back to the car, blew back into the house because she forgot the conference registration paper, and blew back into the car.

Where she discovered she was out of gas.

*weep*

Not to be defeated, the little girl screamed over to her local Hart's station, swiped her credit card at the pump, answered all the applicable questions (carwash? receipt? NO! JUST GIVE ME THE STINKING GAS! I'M LATE FOR THE WRITER'S CONFERENCE AND I'M DUE TO BE A FAMOUS WRITER IN A FEW MONTHS! STOP WASTING MY TIME!), inserted the nozzle, started the flow of petrol, and then sat impatiently in her car out of the arctic winds. Counting. The. Seconds.

After awhile the little girl looked over at the pump. It had stopped on $40. Forty dollars? Huh. That never happens. That is cheap for a minivan (a.k.a., M.A.V. – Mother's Assault Vehicle). But whatev. The little girl was late. She whipped the nozzle out of the car, patted the pump—which inexplicably did not tell her that her transaction had completed successfully like it always did, but who knows? Maybe they changed the message to something less informative. Who cares. She was late—and drove off.

And that's when the little girl noticed that the gas gauge was still on empty.

EMPTY.

With $40 worth of gas in her car.

Weird.

But, the little girl's gas gauge had been acting strange lately. Often it would suddenly drop to empty then travel back up again, like it got bored doing the dead-man's float at the top of the register and woud dive to the bottom for a look-see. "Stupid broken car with almost 200,000 miles on it." the little girl thought. "Now my gas gauge is kaput."

And the little girl drove on. For, you see, she had a conference of writers to get to—has she mentioned? She was due to be famous. She was not to be deterred by a busted gas gauge on a car which she had just filled with inexplicably inexpensive gas. She wasn't going to stop and figure things out. Her husband of husbandness could do that later. She was going to drive the 14 miles to the conference.

And she did.

Except — she noticed when she pressed the "How Many Miles Do I Have Left On This Tank Of Gas" button, it said she only had 6. Wha? She had a tank full of gas. This could not be. And then when she accidentally missed her exit because of the idiotic construction and lack of signage (and she really thinks her state bird should be changed to the Orange Construction Cone) she had to drive even farther. And since she had all the time in the world, at the next highly constructed exit, she ended up just being funneled right back onto the freeway, except in the OPPOSITE direction. Now, the little girl promises she did not swear. Instead she calmly pushed the Miles Left button again and found she was down to, like, 4.

Er.

Something was not right. BUT SHE WAS LATE. CLEARLY IT WAS THE GAS GAUGE'S FAULT. But something was not right.

Jeesh.

So, the little girl pulled into the very next gas station she came to once she got off the infernal freeway, went through the whole swipe/questionnaire/button-press thing again . . . . and stuffed her tank full of sixty-six bucks worth of gas. Sixty-freaking-six.

How was this possible? She had already filled her tank once. How? And now she was REALLY late.

We have no explanation. All we know is that the little girl was later found on the ground outside her conference rocking back and forth, her brain having imploded from the stress of late-night-children, corned beef and cabbage, interval tread-mill running, lack of writing fame, chronic lateness, AND FORGETTING TO SELECT THE STINKING GAS GRADE ON THE FIRST PUMP AND THEN JUST SITTING THERE KEEPING THE NOZZLE COMPANY WHILE THE PREVIOUS CUSTOMER'S GAS PURCHASE AMOUNT OF $40 BLARED AT HER FROM THE SCREEN AND NO ACTUAL GAS WENT INTO HER TANK. AND THEN DRIVING OFF AND COMING THIS CLOSE TO RUNNING OUT OF GAS IN BLOOD-AND-CRIPS-VILLE.

Moral?

Go to gardening conferences instead.