Friday, March 19, 2010 Breaking the law...

I left work early to run home and get the farm truck Dixie. We had plans on running to Home Depot and Costco after work, and she is the only vehicle that could do it all...
We went to Home Depot and were wandering aisles....what do we need for the next steps for the chicken coop? We knew we needed T1-11 to side the back of the barn, so Patty went to find a flat bed cart and I went looking for the siding. I heard her whistle from the other end of the aisle, at least 200 feet away. I looked and she was coming with the cart. We were the only ones in the aisle...so I thought I would be funny and lifted my shirt up over my head and flashed her my bra. She did the same back, and we headed toward eachother to meet in the middle. We stopped laughing when we noticed the huge "eye in the sky" camera at the center of the aisle. Great...now we would have most wanted posters in the corporate home depot office...or even worse a you tube video. They would probably post us on "The people of home depot" like they have "The people of Walmart". (Which you should look at if you've never seen it...it's absolutely hilarious.)
We weren't sure if someone was going to come talk to us about our behavior, so we hurried and gathered our 11 sheets of T1-11, a handful (or two) of 2x4s and 2x6s, and left the store. :)
We then headed to Costco. We have a plan to try to be more frugal...to cook all of our meals, and avoid going out. Our friend Jenny Craig was great but an expensive date...so we figured Costco would be a great place to start to get some basic staples that go into tons of meals. So we bought enough food for a month, (at least). And there was no flashing in Costco...we didn't want to start an indecent exposure spree....
So we went to pack it all into Dixie...Almost 2 carts full of food on top of our treasures from home depot.
There was only one little problem...it was now after 8, and dark. We both know from last Fall that Dixie's dashboard lights don't work...at all. Her dash is pitch black at night. No idea how much gas we have...or how fast we're going. (It's not the fuse, we've checked that...we just normally don't drive her at night.) So we headed home, Patty driving, and me looking into the bed frequently to make sure our Costco stash wasn't flying all over the freeway. Patty was doing great, occasionally checking her speed with the light from her cell phone. Some guy pulled right up behind us, flashed his brights and sped past. I looked to see if something was coming loose in the bed and Patty yelled, "I'm going the &$^%#!* speedlimit you &$^%#!* *#$hole!!!" I didn't see anything budging in the back so we kept on going home. We had to take a back road due to highway construction at night out where we live...me constantly checking the back, P occasionally shining her phone on the dark dash. When we got closer home, I asked her if we had enough gas to get home, (Dixie gets about 8 miles to the gallon when empty, and we had her quite loaded down.) She checked with her phone, and sure enough we didn't. So she stopped for gas and rechecked our load.
At this point we were both pooped. The thought of unloading all the food from the truck exhausted us even more. So we got back on the road to head home the last 10 miles.
Now out where we live it's pitch black....we don't have sidewalks, or street lights. As a matter of fact we only have 2 traffic lights in our whole little town. So when we went through an intersection and our headlights reflected off the red and blue rack of a car waiting at the stop sign, we knew it was a cop. Patty checked her speed again to be on the safe side, and we continued home. The cop turned out behind us and we maintained our speed...They flipped their brights on and started riding our ass...I told Patty to pull into the old red barn pub up ahead so the cop could pass. She did, and the cop followed us in and flipped their pretty red and blues on....Great...
I figured something was flapping around in back we couldn't see. I knew we were doing the speed limit...and we even had the red flags hanging from our wood that extended out over the back of the bed. I silently prayed as the cop came up to the window that they wouldn't notice the dash lights out...and that we weren't going to be arrested for indecent exposure in home depot...what would I tell my mom??
The cop was a female, and she asked for Patty's driver's license. She then informed us that our tail lights didn't work...at all. The whole back of our truck was pitch black and we had no idea. Patty insisted we had no idea and that it would be fixed the next day, and I had to open my big mouth and insist we didn't drive this vehicle very often... The cop then asked if the emergency blinkers worked. Do trucks this old even have emergency blinkers?! Patty asked me if I knew where they were, (we really don't drive it that often) and the cop even shined her flashlight on the steering wheel console so we could look (since the cab of our truck was dark because of a lack of dashlights!) We found the flashers and they worked. She made a sweep of the truck bed with her flash light and commented that she could tell we had just been to Costco. She then let us off as long as we road the rest of the way home with our flashers on(no pun intended)....not even noticing the darkened dash. I told P that it explained the guy she unloaded her tourettes on and she agreed. We headed home considering ourselves lucky, unloaded the food, and headed to bed. Once again evading my "one phone call" I would of had to make...to my mom. :)