To all who made contributions to our key fund . . .

Thank you. Although I appreciate your concern for Phil’s hide, you’ve all missed the point. It’s not that we can’t afford a new key. We both work at BYU and since you all work here also, you know how lucrative it is. We are rolling in money. Some days I wonder what to do with all of it so the money clearly isn't the issue. Quite simply, I refuse to be held hostage to the Mazda dealership. As soon as the car manufacturers release their grip on the key codes and start letting locksmiths charge a reasonable price for replacement keys, I will buy a new key. If you recall, in my original post I disclosed that I have done a little research and some car makers have already seen the light. Mazda is getting close, I can feel it.

Here's another flashback to my original post . . . I'm more than willing to play the martyr to make a point. Just don't tell Phil that in my research I also discovered that it will cost us approximately ten times what a replacement key will cost to get a new key if we misplace the one that we still have. Apparently they have to have one key in order to program a second key, and if we lose the one key, they have to change some kind of circuit board inside our car. Nice. Elevators are suddenly very scary places for me.

And in case you have all been swayed to Phil's side (like my sister has been - traitor) by his "I'm the reasonable one in this argument so feel sorry for me because my wife is crazy" post, just know that he didn't describe our original conversation even close to how it actually happened. He's right, I would have been more than willing to wait until noon for him to come and get me if I had to. I'm a reasonable person (no comments from any of you on that one) and I know that he has job responsibilities and I would never have expected him to drop everything to come and get me. I'm not that demanding and I do manage to take care of myself most of the time. The frustration turned to anger and hurt feelings only after I sat on the bus and it sunk in that that my dear husband didn't give me any sympathy or even a "bummer - sorry that you're stuck" along with his "I've got meetings" response. Instead, I got the meeting thing (which I totally understood, thus my comment about doing some laundry) along with the lecture about the key and "Or rather than waiting until 12:00 when I might be able to come (not even a guarantee), bus #833 comes closest to our house so hop on that. Or call Sue. Since she's been serving as your frontal lobe for so long maybe she can fix it." That's as close to a direct quote as you are going to get two days later. That was it. The fact that he had the bus number so handy clued me into the fact that he had thought about that response before I ever even called him. My students must have told him what was going on because I had to call them to let them know that I was going to be late. I love Phil. He's a great guy and a wonderful husband. But nobody is going to convince me that he didn't drop the ball on this one. That's why he was in trouble. He asks "What's a guy to do?" For future reference Phil, at least feel bad for me that I'm stuck, even if it's all my fault and even if there's nothing that you can do about it, and stifle the lecture and the snide remarks until we are at a spot that we can all laugh at it. And just so you know, it may take years before I get to that laughing spot.

Now I'm going to take my key fund and go buy myself a treat, since it's clearly not going to go be used to buy a new key. Maybe Phil's wife really is crazy, and maybe you all should feel sorry for him. You'll likely never know for sure though, because I think I'm going to take away his rights to post on this blog.