New Ride

September 18, 2015

My new ride for the next week or two while the Prius gets a new trunk and bumper:

Crash!

September 17, 2015

So, this happened today.  I was heading to school with Danielle after a morning orthodontic appointment.  It was approximately 8:30, so there was a lot of traffic on Herndon.  We stopped at a red light behind about eight other cars.  When the light turned green, apparently the woman behind me glanced up, saw green, and just hit the gas before she realized that the rest of us hadn't moved forward yet.  Luckily no one was hurt, but it's going to have to spend a little time in the shop.  What a pain!

That New Car Smell....

January 17, 2012

My Honda Odyssey has been something of a money pit over the years. Up until this mini-van, I have always loved Hondas--efficient, reliable, spacious. But this one that I got cost way too much (courtesy of a balloon payment at the end of my lease from the previous vehicle), and it has had all kinds of things we've had to repair along the way. A key that wouldn't turn in the ignition. (We replaced the ignition switch, so that we had separate keys for the doors and for the ignition.) Oh yeah--the door keys only worked selectively on the doors. Rarely for the driver's side, only occasionally for the passenger side. Mostly we relied on unlocking the trunk to unlock all the other doors. Then there is the air conditioner, which suddenly stopped working in the 100+ degree weather last summer. Since it was supposed to cost nearly $1200 dollars to repair the system, our solution to the no air conditioning situation (I get cranky when I'm too hot) was to trade cars with Doug during the summer. Since his commute to work takes him an hour up into the foothills, the heat wasn't as much of a factor for him. Plus, he's not a princess, like me. He'll tolerate sweat. Add all that to some minor cosmetic issues--windows that screeched horribly when I wanted them raised or lowered, plus a few dings in the windshield--and you have a car with issues. Nothing terrible, nothing insurmountable, but still--issues. This is all besides the fact that it was a boring silver color. Ugh. Not beautiful blue, not racy red. Just blah.

Nevertheless, it was drivable, workable. We made it work. It was sufficient for hauling around kids and friends and soccer balls and stacks of books and just-about-everything-but-the kitchen-sink which comprises what my kids and I cart about with us on any given day. It was working, until we hit the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. This particular straw came in the form of a Friday evening trip to the bank. Mind you, this was Friday night on the last day of the month, when lines can be out the door. We drove into the parking stall, took care of our banking needs, and then got back in the car to leave. Except that the car wouldn't go into reverse. Or rather, it did go into reverse; there was just no corresponding movement in that direction. I tried everything, including coaxing, coddling, bargaining. But try bargaining with an oversized piece of tin. It's just futile. I called Doug asking for advice, and he thought I should put the van in neutral, push it back out of the stall, and then shift into drive. My worry, however, was that I'd get it pushed back and manage to block the pathway of all the folks who were driving into the lot for their Friday evening banking needs. (There is only a single lane driveway into the bank,) I assure you, that would have been worse than staying put. I didn't want to have a mob of angry people behind me in addition to having a colossaly uncooperative vehicle. Finally, after closing hour at the bank, my car decided inexplicably to actually shift into reverse. Once backed out, I was able to shift into drive, and drive I did---straight to the auto mechanic. There, I was given grim news. In addition to all of its other quirky issues, my van's transmission was shot. The problem was only going to get worse if I did not send it in for repair, to the tune of $2100. I don't know about you,. but I don't happen to have $2100 just lying around in loose change. However, having a car that only sporadically decided to travel in reverse would simply not do, and it was my understanding that the forward motion only had a short shelf life as well. It was time for a new car.

After doing some online research and looking around at local lots, we settled in on a greenish gray Prius. The MPG is, of course, leaps and bounds above what the van was getting, and certainly much better than Doug's Durango gets as well. We've decided that Doug will mostly drive the Prius while he's commuting an hour or so each way to work every day, because we'll save quite a bit in gas money. In the meantime, I'll be using his Durango for the daily Mom Taxi Service. For now, the van haunts the driveway, big lumbering hunk of tin that it is, until we can pay it down enough to make selling it a viable option.

The new ride:

Summer is Supposed to Be Relaxing, Right?

June 17, 2010

So far on my summer vacation:

I've been car-less since Saturday. The van is currently in the shop re-learning what it's like to having a working ignition tumbler. It'll probably be out of rehab today--my fingers are crossed.

I had to walk to the car repair shop to pick up Doug's car, which was having issues of its own. Doug had to rent a car to get to work, but since he was at work, I had to take care of retrieving it. It wasn't too far a walk, thankfully, but a little too hot for my taste at two o'clock in the afternoon.

I took Doug's car in to get it smogged--twice. It failed the first time, because the battery had died the night before (thus, its little trip to the shop). Who knew that a recently dead battery is automatic grounds for failing a smog test--something about it looking suspiciously like someone trying to tamper with the vehicle in order to get it to pass the smog test. First of all, I am not mechanically adept enough to tamper with a vehicle. Tampering could only end badly. Second of all, shouldn't that kind of information be posted somewhere? Such as:

"Dear Customer:

If your battery has recently died, please do not bring it in to be smogged yet. We would love to save you some money and not have you pay twice for the same service. Drive the vehicle for about forty-sixty miles first, THEN bring it in. We hate to have to test it, fail you, charge you, and then have to charge you again when you come back the next day. Just trying to help you save a little dough for whatever vacations you have planned for the summer.

Love,
The Smog Shop"

On the children front, I had to wake up bright and early to take Brianna to work at 6 a.m. yesterday. 6 a.m., on vacation? So not my idea of relaxation. It is time for that girl to get a driver's license! Luckily, Doug was driving his repaired car, so I had the rental for a couple of hours before I had to return it shortly after delivering Bree to work. The fine folks at Enterprise deposited me back home.

The kids' dad picked up Danielle and me yesterday afternoon to go to her appointment with the pediatric neurologist. After her seizure last week (the second one in a year), her doctor wanted to run some extra tests and refer her to a specialist just to make sure there was nothing serious going on. Her blood work for anemia, blood sugar, and thyroid all came back normal, and the neurologist was pleased with what he saw when he examined her--no red flags, everything looks normal. She'll go in for a CT scan and an EEG next week, and he also wants to schedule her for an EKG, but so far things are looking good. She's a trooper, too, and hasn't been too freaked out by any of this.

None of this is exactly what I had envisioned when I was finishing out my last week of school and looking forward to vacation, but on the bright side, at least we weren't picking up the pieces of broken cars and juggling doctors' appointments when we BOTH had to be at work last week. I think I'll just pretend my summer begins today though, when both of our cars are sitting in the driveway tonight and all the kids are healthy and happy swimming in the pool. THAT is exactly what I had in mind for my summer.

The End of the School Year Turned Out to Be More Memorable Than I Would Have Thought

June 14, 2010

I had every intention of posting throughout the week last week, but it was such an eventful week that there was no time at all until today (my birthday!) to sit and catch my breath. So what have we been up to?

It all started last Sunday, when Brianna started feeling under the weather. Poor timing for her, as last week was finals week and she still had some studying to get done, as well as a couple of projects. By the end of the evening, after having worked an eight hour shift, she was barely able to stand. Her fever was enough to make her dad want to keep her home and take her to the doctor on Monday. The verdict? A blister on her foot, having gotten infected, made her leg balloon up and caused her system to go into overdrive to fight it. They put her on antibiotics, and she was on the road to recovery.

Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty mellow during the daytime. Even though I was at work, my senior classes were completely empty; all the seniors were out at graduation practice. That left me to packing up my room and organizing my files to wrap up the school year. Tuesday night we had the end of the year Parent-Teacher Club meeting (I'm a member of the Board), and that turned out to be one of the most feisty and interactive meetings of the year. Wednesday night was our high school's graduation, and even that was not without its controversy. We managed to have a few young men decide to they didn't want to follow the rules, and they got themselves escorted from the stadium. One of them dug his heels in and had to exit in handcuffs. Happy graduation!
Graduation was not the most dramatic event of the evening, though, believe it or not. When I picked the kids up from their dad's house after graduation, I realized that Danielle had gotten a severe sunburn on her choir's field trip to Wild Water Adventure Park earlier in the day. Like most kids, she was not diligent about re-applying sunscreen throughout the day, nor was she careful about drinking enough water as she was roasting on the water slides. She was completely wiped out and wanted to fall directly into bed, but she was so burned that I wanted to put aloe vera on to sooth her first. We stood in the bathroom and I gently rubbed some onto her shoulders. Suddenly she pulled forward a bit, then slumped to the floor and started convulsing, eyes rolling back in her head. Let me tell you, watching your child have a seizure is frightening, even when it only lasts a couple of seconds. She actually had a seizure about a year ago, and at the time her doctor said not to worry unless it happened again. So yes, this time, the second time, it was hard not to jump right to panic mode. She seemed to recover pretty quickly though, so I decided I'd let her go to bed after getting some water in her, and I'd call the doctor first thing in the morning. I didn't sleep all night, checking in every little bit to make sure she was okay.

I asked her the next morning if she wanted to stay home, but she was insistent on going, since she was supposed to be accepting awards at the assembly--High Honor Roll and (irony here) Perfect Attendance. She didn't want to miss. I emailed her teacher and a good friend to help keep an eye on her during the day, and went to work. As soon as the doctor's office was open, I put in a call to her for advice. She decided since this was the second seizure incident, she wanted to see Danielle that afternoon. I figured I'd have enough time to get to Danielle's awards ceremony, get back to campus to give my freshmen their final, and then get back to Danielle's school to pick her up for the appointment. Just as I got off the phone with the doctor, a call came into my classroom from the Junior High campus. I picked up the phone and heard, "Hi, this is the nurse at Alta Sierra. I've got Nicholas, and I need you to come pick him up. He's cut himself, and I think he's going to need stitches." I mumbled that I'd be there as soon as possible, and I went to the office to get coverage for my freshman class final. Everyone in the office was ready to bend over backwards to help me out. You know how when you're emotional and people either offer sympathy or help, it can break the facade of one who is trying to pretend to be calm and in control? Well, on no sleep and trauma overload, I completely lost it for a couple of minutes. And by the way, I can't stand it when people see me cry--it's not pretty. I ran to the bathroom, pulled myself together, and yelled my thanks without making eye contact again as I headed off down the hallway and out the door to gather up my injured children.

I got to Nicholas and he was temporarily bandaged and thankfully wasn't in much pain. The bleachers that had ripped open a couple of inches down his back had only won a minor battle. He and I went to the elementary school to watch Danielle get her awards, and then headed off to the Urgent Care clinic to begin our two and a half hour wait. Nicholas was pretty nervous about the idea of stitches, but fortunately the nurse practitioner decided steri-strips could do the job nicely. It didn't occur to me that Nicholas didn't know what that meant, so her proclamation didn't relieve him nearly as much as it did me. When the nurse walked in with gauze, the strips, and scissors, Nicholas looked as if he was about the hyperventilate. When I asked him what was wrong, his eyes got big and round, and he whispered to me, "What are those SCISSORS for??" Poor kid thought she was going to cut HIM! The nurse looked at him all indignant and said, "I have to cut the gauze with SOMETHING!" She got him all patched up, and we headed to his dad's house to drop him off before I picked up Danielle from school for her appointment.
For those of you who are keeping track, Danielle's visit made the third kid and the third doctor visit of the week. Because she had an appointment, the wait time was much shorter. We got in and the doctor (a new one for Danielle) began to take down all of her history and all of my concerns. As a mom, it's nice to have your concerns taken seriously--there's nothing more frustrating than a doctor ignoring your mother's intuition with a dismissive, "Have her drink some water and get some sleep. She'll be fine." Danielle's doctor, though not alarmist at all, wanted to run a whole series of tests to see if anything abnormal turned up that would make her susceptible to these seizures, and to see if they might be able to predict the likelihood of a reoccurence. She was also fantastic with Danielle, talking to her and not just about her, and explaining everything she was doing without talking down to her. She checked Danielle's blood pressure, vision, and reflexes. She checked her throat and her ears. She inquired about eating habits and sleeping habits. She ordered tests to check her sodium, potassium, electrolytes, and white cell counts. She also ordered appointments to be set up for an EEG and an MRI. Although it was likely that Danielle simply had an adverse reaction to dehydration and heat exhaustion, her doctor wanted to rule out any other possibilites. We are currently awaiting results of the blood tests and will go in for the EEG and MRI as soon as Valley Children's Hospital calls to verify an appointment time. In the meantime, she's recovering well and no longer looks like she's about to drop to the floor at any moment.

The next day, the last day of school, I notified my children that no one was allowed to get hurt--we had reached our quota. Thankfully, they all obliged me. Despite all the chaos of the week, I managed to get my room packed away, finalized and posted my grades, and said goodbye to the few children who deigned to show up on the last day of school. Bring on the summer vacation! Except that the first day of summer vacation, Saturday, my car broke down. I don't know if it's pouting because my kids got so much extra attention this week, but it has decided it's got to go into the shop (its own version of the doctor, I suppose). My best guess is it'll be a $500 fix, if we're lucky. No matter, though--I'm on vacation, and I don't really have any obligation to be anywhere for awhile. We'll manage, I thought. And then Sunday arrived. Doug and I were running around (in his car, naturally), shopping to put some final touches on our back yard before the heavy swim traffic hits it for the summer. And wouldn't you know, HIS car died on us! We were left stranded, waiting for a tow truck to get us home.

So today, on my birthday, I spent the day trying to make arrangements for both of our cars to get the attention they need while Doug was in a rental car at work. The good news is we have a couple of good buddies who took care of towing the cars where they needed to go, and Doug's car ended up being a much more minor problem than it could have been. My car is still in the shop, and I'm hoping it, too, will be a relatively painless repair. I ended the day with a birthday dinner with Doug and the kids and some very thoughtful, carefully chosen gifts. And chaos and mishaps and accidents and all of the unexpected happening all at once can't change the fact that I feel completely blessed by everyone I have in my life--all of those people I love--which is the best kind of birthday wish to have come true. Truth be told, though, I am also wishing, as a special little birthday wish, that this week would be a little less interesting than last week. Even a little boring. That would be okay with me.