Gas

I am a relatively high-functioning adult on most fronts: I pay bills on time; I get a pap smear annually; my underwear doesn’t have holes. But there are a few areas in which I fall short, very short. These include taking my children to the dentist (I believe M has gone three times in her life, and E once--M actually begs me to call the dentist and make an appointment), washing the sheets (don’t ask), and putting gas in my car.

I don’t even dislike pumping gas that much, though I don’t particularly enjoy it. I just find it an annoying waste of time, and I usually manage not to get around to it. My tank always goes down to empty, and S drives my car frequently enough that somewhere around empty he fills the tank.

The other day, though, it was hitting empty and I was driving and there was no choice but to fill it so I did, and I was shocked, shocked I tell you, at the price of gas. $2.19 a gallon?! Last time I remember (which may have been quite a while ago, given my tank-filling frequency) it was somewhere around $1.89. What happened?!

S has a theory, a conspiracy theory. He thinks that W and Cheney talked to their pals at the oil companies and told them to hold up production or delivery or whatever causes gas shortages, so that right around now prices would spike, just in time for the vote on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I’m generally not a conspiracy theorist, but I can get behind that one. And I guess it worked.

So the cost of filling my tank better plummet as soon as we start that drilling, because it’s supposed to solve all our energy problems, right?