Last Wednesday Skylar walked into our bedroom at 6:30 AM and woke me, saying, "this has literally never happened to me before."

In case you missed it, this was 6:30 AM. I know "AM" is an uncommon abbreviation that you may have never encountered. To clarify, that means morning time. "AM" stands for "Absolutely The Hell Not Right Now." I don't know why they went with "M" for the second letter. People were really stupid back then when they chose all the abbreviations. The point is, this was in the morning. At 6:30.

6:30 is a time when I do not want to be awake. I am trying to remain extremely hot and that requires me to sleep all the time and never experience any stress whatsoever, which are both quite reasonable expectations for my life considering that I am a good person who recycles. Also I always bring the grocery cart to the little corrals. I have also accidentally stolen from the grocery store a number of times and refused to drive all the way back when I got home and realized something slipped through the self-checkout. So that might cancel out the grocery cart thing. But not the recycling thing.

I groaned, "what happened."

"I don't know what I'm going to do," Skylar continued.

He has a completely opposite way of communicating crucial information than I do. Skylar likes to unroll this sort of thing as though he is crafting a suspense novel and wants to build up to a twist ending.

When I'm experiencing stress (which I don't deserve, see above), I lead with the crisis. For example, if I was jumping down the street on a pogo stick (DON'T JUDGE MY LIFE) and broke my leg, I would hop into the house and say, "I just broke my leg." Then I would fill in the detail about the pogo stick and how cute I looked and how much everyone outside really liked me.

Skylar doesn't do that.

He makes me wait for a long time to find out about the broken leg. I usually have to hear minutes of details that have nothing to do with the broken leg before we ever even get to that bit of information.

"What happened," I repeated to Skylar, this time with less patience, and I started with little patience to begin with because of the whole 6:30 MORNING TIME thing.

"Well, I walked out to my car—it's very cold out there by the way—and I tried to open the door and my automatic locks weren't working and I thought, 'that's strange' because I've never had that problem before and I've had this car for like 10 years."

[Editor's Note: I'm giving you the abbreviated version of his story because I respect your time in a way he doesn't respect mine.]

"Once I climbed into the car I tried to turn the key and nothing happened—and I mean nothing."

I used my incredible intellect and decades of expertise in the automotive industry to interrupt at this point and diagnose Skylar's vehicle with a dead battery.

Now, we have a driveway that's so narrow I had to buy the game Operation and build up a whole new skillset just so I could learn to park between the two retaining walls that are so close together we violate laws of physics every time we fit a car between them. Skylar's car was parked behind mine and they were both facing the same direction, meaning that if we even wanted to try to jump it, we would have had to gather enough jumper cables to do an electric Hands Across America to connect our two vehicles.

But also, his car died recently and we were only able to jump it with great effort so I figured the battery had finally gone on back to Jebuz and we would probably just need to replace it altogether.

The only way for us to go out and get a new battery was to remove Skylar's car from the driveway so we could drive mine to AUTO BADASS MAN STORE!!! or whatever the place you buy batteries is called. The problem for us is our driveway is basically a slip-and-slide that drops down to our street at a steep slope and the street is also at a steep slope.

After we figured out how to put his completely dead vehicle in neutral (which was a whole thing in and of itself and required ACTUAL MAN TOOLS), Skylar climbed in and immediately rolled the car into the curb across the street, almost completely perpendicular to the road that was now teeming with cars full of hearty Utah folks just trying to get to their jobs at the candy factory or wherever people work.

You know that I am a Man of Strength. You get that sense from me. That I can probably lift a truck off a baby even if it wasn't my own baby.

And yet, because this car was now basically pointing uphill, my massive arms, plucky boobs, and ass you could crack an egg on, were not sufficient alone to move the vehicle.

It was around this time a very kind man pulled over and got out to help. I mean, he didn't have much of a choice because we were completely blocking the street, but still.

Once it was determined that even the strength of two men, plus Skylar sitting in the driver's seat shouting out such helpful things as "push harder," was not enough to move this car any meaningful amount.

A neighbor and a dump truck driver were then added to our team of helpers, and because of this army of MANLY MEN, we were able to finally move the car enough for Skylar to turn the wheel so we could let him slide down the hill backwards and try to pull over to the side, which he was surprisingly not great at. He eventually ended up about two feet away from the curb when he got out and shouted at the rest of us who were telling him he needed to get closer, "I'm not going to let perfect be the enemy of good here!" which is my new favorite excuse when I'm quitting something I've done poorly.

He then marched back up to the house, his Birkenstocks slapping against his heels as he walked, and retreated inside to make pancakes, yelling something about how he was "the talent" and was going to leave the rest of the manual labor in the dead of winter to me.

And listen, before you turn on Skylar, you should know I do this to him just as often as he does it to me. I recently handed him a toolkit and said, "good luck fixing our broken lock on the back door." And then every time he tried to talk to me about it I just did a high-pitched scream because I didn't want to get involved. Marriage is about commanding each other to do things and just trying to keep the score roughly even.

I forgot to mention I was wearing knee-high socks, shorts with a hole in them, and a sweatshirt covered in dry paint for all of this. And I know what you're thinking: "stars! They're just like us!" And you are CORRECT.

Moments later I arrived at "CAR PARTS FOR MANLY MEN XXX GRUNT GRUNT" store, threw a corroded battery onto the counter, and then bought whatever a man who looked like he knew what cars were told me to buy.

It was now 7:30 MORNING TIME and I was back on the street, two feet from the curb, installing the new battery and saying swearwords they haven't even invented yet like "krackslop" and "bitefunnel" which I know don't sound bad to you but trust me, they are worse than the f-word.

After I drove the car back up the driveway and put it in park, Skylar stepped out onto the front porch and asked "did the new battery work," which I didn't realize how funny that question was until right now.

"Thanks, honey," he said, kissing my cheek and grabbing his General Hospital Affairs Doctor Bag so he could finally leave for work, now an hour late.

"I'm so glad you fixed it," he added.

"That has literally never happened to me before."

~It Just Gets Stranger