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.