mother's day fail

this past weekend i went to dalton to spend the weekend with mary ellen since sunday was, duh, mother's day. i'm not a huge fan of giving people tangible gifts so i thought it would be nice to clean out her car & have it detailed. as in, major interior de-scumming. sounds easy enough, but i wanted to do this on the sly so it'd be a huge surprise. fortunately she was busy with dance recitals all day on saturday so i knew i'd have access to the car. i rolled into dalton around 4:00, found her spare key, dug through her email and found out where the recital was (the wink theater) and when it started (4:00). i figured the thing would last about an hour and a half, which would give me plenty of time to get it cleaned & have it back in the lot. i knew that bad things could happen if i didn't make it back before the show ended, but that was a risk i was willing to take. because who wouldn't *love* the inside of their car being spotless?! if i didn't make it back in time, i was praying she'd check her voice mail before noticing her car was missing, as i left her a message saying that i was driving her car. hoping she'd check the voice mail and not go into a panic thinking someone jacked her car. oh, and really, really hoping that she wouldn't call the cops.

i could make this a really long narrative about how almost everything that could go wrong actually went wrong, but i won't. i'll just list the highlights, and hopefully you'll get the idea.

• found her car, parked mine across street. ran across street, drove her car & parked next to mine. drove my car with the intent to park in her empty space (i even had a giant note on the dash that said "mary ellen: i have your car. call me!") but somebody scored it first. parking my car in that same spot was probably the most crucial part of the plan, and since i couldn't pull that off, i probably should have abandoned plan right then.
  
• no way would anyone be able to clean inside her car unless i took everything out first. so i frantically removed every blasted thing out of that car & put it in my trunk. took way too long. i was cursing & working up quite a sweat. people started to notice. they probably thought i was stealing her... oh wait, i *was* stealing.
  
• started cruising around for a car detailing place. in atlanta there are two on every corner. in dalton, not so much. and it was saturday. apparently these types of businesses aren't open on saturday, or if they are, they close before 4:00. again, probably should have bailed out and returned the car at this point.
• noticed my cell phone battery very low.
  
• after driving around for much too long i stopped at a car audio place to ask if they knew of a detail shop that would be open. a most helpful girl told me "julians" downtown. oh good, i'm not screwed, and fortunately it's down the street from the theater.
  
• julian's was closed. at this point i tried to return the car. *tried.* but the streets were blocked off for some hot rod parade thing.
  
• starting to panic because cell phone battery dangerously low.
  
• drove her car back to her house. planned to get down and dirty and clean it myself. couldn't find an extension cord for the vacuum. grabbed some clean-up wipe things and went to the self-service car care place.
  
• whilst vacuuming mats, it started raining. now i was wet, on top of being dirty, smelly, and extremely frustrated.
• thankfully my cell phone still on. but oops, i missed a call from mary ellen. couldn't hear it ring over the vacuum.
  
• called her back. "yes i have your car, no i haven't been kidnapped. see you at home."

the good news is that she was laughing at me when i got home rather than being totally pissed. i can't decide if the worst part was that i had to spoil the surprise or that i had to admit that my plan was completely bush league.