frozen car doors

I drive an old car.  It's a 2001.  It features a cassette player, air conditioning that doesn't work, and a passenger side floorboard that sometimes fills up with water when it rains. 

It's no surprise when things go wrong with my car.  I've been stranded various times (twice at Target) and pretty much anything that can go wrong, has. 

The latest madness inducing problem little quirk is this:  my doors freeze shut.

This first happened a few months ago one day when I was leaving to drop Superfrykid off at school & go to work.

It had rained the evening before and then it got pretty cold overnight.  When I went out to start my car, I had a difficult time opening the door.  In fact, I had to get in on the passenger side to ram the driver's side door open from the inside.   I figured once it warmed up, all would be well.

So I go back inside to finish getting everything together, then about 10 minutes later, we jump in and take off.  I backed out & my door falls open & flaps in the breeze.  Good thing I already had my seatbelt on because that would not have been good to fall out of the car while driving.

I think to myself:  Ok, no big deal.  I will lock it and it will be fine. 

However, my door will not latch closed and my state of the art door locks will not lock if they think there is a door that's open.

Fine, I'll just hold my door shut the whole way while I drive.

I grip the door firmly and proceed down the driveway.  Then my passenger door flies open.  It won't latch either.

Lovely.  I can drive while holding my own door shut.  However, I cannot reach over and hold the passenger door closed while I am driving nor do I have a piece of rope or a long scarf to try and MacGuyver it.

It's just one of those things that pretty much only happen to me.

Since then, it's only happened a few times.

Once I got about a mile down the road & had to pull over to make sure the passenger door was closed.  I got out and ran around to the other side of the car to open & re-close the door.  My friend, who once saved my life with a breastpump, happened to drive by & beeped at me.  Then I get a text asking me if I'm ok and if I'm just doing a Chinese firedrill. No, I'm just making sure my doors don't fly open unexpectedly.  She understood perfectly, which is one of the reasons we are friends, because she just gets it.  No need to stop, just wave & beep - she knew if I had needed her, I would have given some type of distress signal.  Also, she realized that there was a possibility that it was, indeed, a Chinese firedrill.  Which I must say, I thoroughly enjoy, but generally don't do them unless I'm getting married.  But that's another story for another time.

This is my life, people.

When you feel like complaining about something, just be glad you don't have to go around gripping your door handle while you drive or wondering if your passenger door is about to make like a Transformer and pretend to be an airplane.