My Aunt the Carnivorous Moose: Swimming Pretty in the Glass-Half-Full 2012: Day 7

Today was not a good day.

I was angry.

Very angry.

On the first day of the weekend.

When I should be sleeping in, eating a long and lazy brunch with my partner, doing the quiz in the Sydney Morning Herald's Good Weekend magazine.

But instead, I am angry. In shock. Exhausted.

I had been woken up by a call from the police (via my housemate when they went to our apartment; I was at my partner's) at 8.55 to tell me my car had been taken for a joyride (and not the kind Roxette had in mind) and dumped a few kilometres away in Marrickville, with the engine running, sides scraped, and the steering column ripped to shreds.

But it couldn't be! I had left on the same street I had parked on safely for three years. Nothing had ever happened to it. So of course I fully expected it to be there this morning. But according to the very friendly but grave constables from Marrickville Police station it wasn't.

The police-issued gloves so I could pick up anything in the car that didn't belong to me in the hope it would belong to the thieves and provide more evidence. In the end, the only stuff in the car was mine.

A sorry fingerprint-dust covered car.

It looked like I hadn't washed it after a drug-fueled outdoor party.

Hard up against the wall (think the police, or the lovely guys from the factory next door who reported the car to police, had to do this to get it out of the lane way; the thieves didn't go to a lot of trouble to park it properly let's just say).

Sadly this mess in the back seat is all mine.

So much fingerprinting dust.

They made a total mess of the steering column when they hot-wired the car.

Dust all over my stereo (I had detached the stereo front for the first time in months and I can't even tell you why).

It was instead rammed up against a grey Besser brick wall in a tight back alley of an industrial road, door open, with my rego papers strewn around it. Oh, and covered with white finger printing dust that made it look like a bus full of high flying professionals had done unending lines of cocaine on it.

It was, in short, a violated, broken mess and not where I had left it all a scant 12 hours before.

So yes suddenly I was angry, in shock, trembling.

My rational adult brain told me told get it together, get showered, get to the police station but the rest of me was in shock. I knew I needed to go to the police station but beyond that I was having a hard time thinking. Thankfully my partner, who was an absolute Rock of Gibraltar of support, held me, told me that shock was natural, and that we would take the time we needed and the police would understand.

Of course, all I could think about was that I shouldn't be reacting like this. It wasn't like someone had died, or I had been told they had cancer or anything. It was just my car, the car I professed to simply tolerate, nothing more, and it had been stolen. In the grand scheme of things, not cancer or death.

But that didn't matter. I was in shock, I was grieving and in my world at that point, ands to my great surprise since I didn't think I cared for my car that much, I was grieving. I was angry. I was in shock.

Somehow we both got showered, made it to the police station where the two constables were beyond supportive and understanding and made completing the police report so much easier.

Somehow we found the car, its new ghost-like patina (courtesy of a very thorough police team who found finger prints) obscuring the mint green duco I remembered, pushed hard against a wall in a dingy hot alley way I would never have chosen to go down normally. I suddenly felt irrationally sad, upset, angry but all I could express was again shock.

It wasn't supposed to be here, not like this. I wasn't supposed to be spending my Saturday morning with blue police gloves on, pulling everything from inside the car to see if the thieves had left something in the car. I wasn't supposed to be watching where I leant lest finger print dust cover me all over.

And I certainly wasn't supposed to be trying to start my car, by leaning across from the passenger side, because the driver's side was hard up against a metal railing.

No, none of this was supposed to be happening but it was and here I was trying to take it all in.

The rest of the morning and much of the afternoon, save for a brief stop for lunch at South End cafe where my partner sensibly talked of almost everything but the car, were spent talking to a delightful customer rep from my insurance agency, and meeting up with a tow truck driver who was thoroughly professional and caring and friendly and who towed my car away, covered in dust, scratched and broken, to a holding yard in St Peters.

I may or may not see it again - that is up to the insurance assessor on Monday - and I suddenly realised I loved that car. Not just because it took me places, like I had stated so often to my friends in an attempt to make it clear just how much I barely tolerated any kind of car, not just my own, but because it made my life possible. True I didn't drive it as much these days but it was integral to so much of what I had done and been these last 14 years and suddenly it could possibly just disappear.

Just like that.

So I was angry.

And in shock.

It was not a good day.