That stupid apricot cost me $6

Living in the “Marmalade District” on Apricot Avenue sounds all quaint and romantic until the apricots from the neighbor’s tree fall all over your driveway leaving a mushy mess. I came back from a 3 day vacation to find that my car has served as a shield for the driveway. I was able to remove most of them, but there were streaks of apricot on all my windows – not to mention one half baked apricot on the hood of my car that wouldn’t come off without me sacrificing the general cleanliness of my hands -- and I wasn’t willing to go back inside and get the proper supplies to remove it. I stood and thought that maybe it would come off in the wind, but then I looked at my watch and decided I had time to go through a car wash. I needed gas anyway.

I am generally opposed to drive-thru car washes for some reason I can’t explain. I prefer to do it myself with the hose and a bucket of sudsy water. The gas pump asked me what kind of car wash I wanted – only it didn’t tell me the difference in price and I had a hard time distinguishing which was more expensive “Super”, “Supreme” or “Premium”. I went with super; ironically, it sounded the least “super” out of all of them. I just wanted that stupid apricot off my hood.

I got my receipt and saw that my choice of car wash was $6. Is that expensive? I don’t know. Like I said, I usually wash mine myself (and don’t get me started on the “pre wash” buckets they have outside the automatic car washes. If you want me to pay you to wash my car, why are you asking me to do it myself before I go in? Geez).

I sat with anticipation inside the carwash, eyeing that apricot and waiting for the high pressure hoses to blow that sucker off my hood. Nope, it was holding strong. Dangit. “Maybe when I go through the dryer at the end it will shove that apricot off” I thought. Well, it kind of did. It got the majority of the fruit off, but now I have a streak of apricot flesh in it’s place. If I had time to take it off I would have, but I had to get to a class. And now, I am picturing the sun dehydrating that apricot into a nice strip of fruit leather on my car out in the unsheltered parking lot.

Looks like it’s going to be a battle to see who gets the unfortunate spot on the driveway for awhile.

(note: that picture above is not from my house. It's from Google)