Really?!!!

Taking all guesses as to what the heck this is... A new tool promised to increase fertility? No.  A canteen? Nope....A whistle made for the likes of Hagrid? Close, but no.  

Sorry I've been missing in blog-world for the past week or so.  We've been dealing with the suck-storm (insert appropriate S-word) centered around this hunk of metal above since Thursday.  This my friends, is a Catalytic Converter...I don't know much about it, but I do know that if it gets cut  stolen out from under your car, it will then sound like 30 Harleys on 'roids when you start and proceed to drive it.  I know this because it happened to my car on Thursday last week, while I was at work.  

Here's how it all broke (ha ha get it? broke ..) down: (I can laugh now because its now sitting in the garage fixed).

• I return to my car after a long day of schlepping furniture and playing design fairy.  It's summer in the California central valley and it is HOT.  All I want to do is get in the car and blast the AC.  I start the car and it sounds AND feels like my car turned has into a Harley and I have a big loud cartoon-like flame blowing out from under the car under my seat.  My car has indigestion, and I don't know why.  Like it was a bad dream, I stop the car and restart it, thinking surely it must have been the way I turned the key (hopefully?) Negative Ghostwriter, my car is prime-time F-d. 
•  Luckily, someone was with me that new about cars.  He immediately got on the ground and noticed that the Catalytic Converter had been CUT out from underneath my car. Cut and stolen. One and done.  I didn't know what the heck I was looking for, but I got on the floor to take a peek, and there was obviously something missing.  
• I get mad, pissed, frustrated, angry and... a potty mouth.
• Enter mall security (history: I work at a mall, oh the stories I can tell), Enter police.
• Policeman takes my info, enters it in, comes back and gives me a Case#. I ask what my odds are, he replies "Odds? There are none".  He explains further that it took the person that did this less than 2 minutes to cut it out and unless they catch him/her in the act of doing it, or randomly pull over a vehicle with 40 Catalytic Converters in it, they'll keep getting away with it.  
• Drum Roll Please:   This bastard will likely get $40 for my Catalytic Converter.  When the cop told me that, I immediately said "F*&^, I'd leave them a $100 bill to leave my F*&*%$# car alone".  I told you. Potty. Mouth. I immediately looked at the officer and apologized out of some ridiculous fear that I could be cuffed for having the mouth of a sailor.  

The night ended with my DH and I having a very manic case of the Charlie Browns, as I like to call it. We were over analyzing our next steps.  We were cursing the Universe for continually shitting on us.  Is it too much to ask for some fertility Universe? Fine.. if you can't grant us that, could you please, for the love of whatever it is that rules you, please don't F-with our car, so that we can go to work, make the money we need to pay for the likely IVF you'll make us do...and oh yeah, we'd like to be able to use that car to drive to the treatment.

Fast forward to now, the drama has subsided. The car is fixed ($440 later), safely in the garage until we figure out how to prevent this from happening again.