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Rewind back to ten years ago when we first moved to New Jersey.

Oh Patient One and I went to buy me a car. After some research we decided to go for a Saturn. Nice safety features (I’m a safety kind of gal), not too expensive, good mileage per tank of gas, yadda yadda.

So we went to the Pompton Lakes dealership, chose the model I liked, and were told we’d have to wait a week because I wanted a stick shift (not that I am a control freak but I just prefer manual transmission). I could wait a week.

Back we went the following week to collect my shiny new car. The staff were lovely. They gave me flowers. They sang me the Saturn song. They took a photo of Oh Patient One and me with my shiny new car and flowers (alas I cannot find the photo). I loved that car. When I left America I missed that car. I still miss that car (it went to a good home).

Fast forward to the present day. Oh Patient One decided that he needed a new car. He spends a lot more time in it than he used to, on account of having to travel further to work each day, so two weeks ago we went to test-drive a Fiat Grand Punto.

Oh Patient One really liked it, it was comfy, it had a bigger engine, it was a smoother ride, he decided to take the car. Only thing was that he would have to wait for two weeks before all the appropriate paperwork and red tape could be sorted, etc. It was the norm. It seemed like a long time, but if two weeks was the norm then two weeks it would have to be.

Because we are due to pick it up tomorrow, Oh Patient One called the dealership yesterday to make sure all of the red tape had, in fact, been sorted out.

Guess, what? There was a problem. Oh, really? I hear you all ask rhetorically. Who’da thunk?

The rep who Oh Patient One had been dealing with had gone on vacation, and nobody seemed to know anything about us picking up the car on Saturday, but promised to pass on the message to Vacation Rep when he gets back on Monday. Oh Patient One put his foot down and insisted that somebody else help him. He’d been promised the car by Saturday, and taking time out of work during the week was just not an option. Vacation Rep’s co-worker agreed to sort it all out and call Oh Patient One back.

Vacation Rep’s co-worker didn’t call Oh Patient One back yesterday.  Vacation Rep’s co-worker called me this afternoon.

It would seem that the new car was accidentally loaded onto a truck this morning and accidentally shipped to South Holland and there was no way it could be back in Rotterdam before Tuesday next week.

Sigh.

When Oh Patient One got back from work about half an hour later and I broke the news to him, he said he’d called again this morning and Another Rep had told him the car was there, it was being buffed up to a nice, shiny buffyness, but they were having problems locating the paperwork.

So here’s the question. Did the lost paperwork get accidentally shipped to South Holland along with the car?

Friend Cindy Holby thinks that I have a little red “red tape” demon sitting above my head laughing joyously and tangling things up for me. I am not a superstitious woman, but I’m giving that hypothesis some serious consideration.

All I can say is that when Oh Patient One finally gets to pick up his new car, there had better be flowers, songs and photos involved. And champagne.