"Do you want to talk about it?"

That's Erika's latest way to get me to laugh. ... It's hard to not crack a smile when your 13-year-old leans over to you at the local pizza place and says, in a serious tone, "Mom, do you want to talk about it?"

We had been talking about what a complete idiot I was ... Nels and I recently bought his mother's old car, a Toyota Camry, so we're going to attempt to sell our oil-burning Toyota Corrolla. The Camry is older than my car (a year younger than Erika, actually) but it's got the same number of miles as the Corrolla and is in relatively good shape. It's also roomier so I won't have to hear Erika's friends from the backseat grumbling stuff like, "I'm so glad my mom drives an Expedition." Ugh.

Anyhow, on Thursday we stopped at the local grocery store in town so Erika could get some snacks to bring to her speech team practice/potluck (Are you thinking I'd actually bake something??? Even though I was on vacation from work all week? Puh-lease.) and when we got out to our car, it wouldn't start. The engine wouldn't even turn over. It was dead.

We had to walk to the church where the speech team was meeting and then I cut over across the highway and walked several more blocks home where I had left my cell phone and other car. I had left the milk in the dead Camry. How pathetic would I look if people saw me walking home with a gallon of skim milk?

A friend of my dad's tried to jumpstart the Camry for me to no avail. Nels has been in Las Vegas at a wedding photography convention this week so between speakers he got to hear voicemail messages from me cursing out the dumb Camry he made me buy.

So Friday I met the tow truck driver at the grocery store to get the car towed to Brainerd and the man gets in the Camry, notices the car is in DRIVE, not PARK. He puts it in PARK and it starts right up.... Yep, it was my own dumb fault.

After he drove the Camry to our house, with Erika and I following him in the Corrolla, we drove him back to his tow truck at the grocery store. Man, did I feel like a dumb ass.

Erika couldn't wait to call Nels on my cell phone and tell him the news. She thought it was hilarious.

"If it makes you feel any better," Nels told me later, during his and his friend Biff's 5-hour delay at the Las Vegas airport. "Biff now knows you're a dumb ass, too."

Fabulous.