I Think My Daughter is Stephanie Plum

I am a huge fan of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books, you know, the female bounty hunter. I went to a book signing in San Diego last year when her 14th book came out. Teddy Bear went with me because she loves all the books, too. She is a funny lady and wore high top Converse tennis shoes. They were so cool but Teddy Bear said I was nowhere near cool enough to wear them so don't get any ideas. Humpff. They passed out stickers saying you were either a Joe Morelli girl or a Ranger girl. For the guys, they had stickers saying they were Grandma Mazur's fans. We even took our picture with Janet~!

Stephanie Plum is one of my favorite characters in a book. She has 2 hot guys chasing after her, owns a hamster named Rex who lives in a soup can, has an incredibly funny Grandma, and the rest of her family is probably like all of our families out here...slightly nuts. But she destroys cars. She has been shot at, had them blow up. She is a menace to all cardom. If they ever make a movie of her books, my daughter needs to play her. Slightly spazzy. Okay, incredibly spazzy, but funny and entertaining when they are not driving people nuts with their stunts.

Teddy Bear got her first car inherited from her big sister, the Hot Tamale. Nice older Honda Accord. She hated that car for some unfathomable reason. Anyway, she got in a few accidents in that car. One accident is when she took a corner at high speed and 2 tires were destroyed. She thinks that because she does not like the car, it did not matter. I truly thought I would end up in an orange jump suit after that.

Next, she got to drive my old Astro Van. A huge van. She did okay at first but one day she got all frazzled because she was lost (she is always lost) and I think banged into a curb. I'm not sure about that one because she is still not fessing up to exactly what happened. That poor car eventually got sold.

Her dad and I bought her a red Ford Focus last October and within one month it got vandalized. It had issues with the mechanical doohickeys. The engine mount was not entirely functional. She had flat tires as often as some people have dye jobs. Well, about a month ago or so, that car died and went to the great dump in the sky for cars. Her dad after much grumbling came through and bought her a Nissan Sentra. Nice color, good shape, clean. Nice. Well, she got a flat tire. Again. She had to go to work the next day and she borrowed my car. I work at home, figured I did not need my car. About 7:30 at night, I am starting to get a little perturbed. Why hasn't she called me to at least tell me she is at Killdozer's house? I go to bed and at 10:00 she comes in to tell me that my car, the car I am still making mondo huge payments for, got bashed in a parking lot at the mall. The front bumper was almost broken in half.

There are truly moments in life when I wish I could crawl into a fictional book and run away. My poor, poor Odyssey. It looked so sad. Silver bumper all cracked and partly hanging there. Well, I am not one to drive around in a car held together with duct tape and looking like a repo special, it went to the boo-boo shop and $850 later it is as good as new. (One of the disadvantages of having a $1000 deductible. Who knew I might actually have to use my insurance?!)

My daughter, on the other hand, is going to be my indentured servant for the next year or so.