Fixing the Fleet

So there we are in the midst of a minor financial crisis.  We are trusting God to provide the next job and keep us within the confines of our current budgetary constraints.  I pray that God will give my husband, who is feeling the stress a little more than I, a little sign of hope that we will make it through.  How does God answer this?  With the simultaneous break down of all 3 of our vehicles during the 2-1/2 weeks of financial famine. 

First our little blue car, the extra car we keep asking ourselves why we own but with months left until Jake drives is seeming like more of a neccesity every day, begins to grind the brakes.  Still works fine but clearly should not be driven until John can replace the brake pads.  No problem we have 2 more.  Then John's work van suddenly starts acting up using an entire tank of gas every day.  It is decided that fixing his work van will be cheaper than a tank of gas per day and so he does a small repair to keep it running with another repair needed in the future.  My van had developed a little shake in January which we were sure was the result of the tires so February was supposed to be a new tire month for the van.  I keep driving while waiting for the next job, in the mean time the shake gets so bad I am no longer feel safe driving.  John decides to put the spare on the van.  He discovers that the tread had pulled away from the tire and I was sliding back and forth on the loose tread as I drove.  I experience a transformation in my driving experience that lasts exactly 1 day.  My wonderful girlfriends drag me out of the house on a Monday night and treat me to dinner and a movie.  I am leaving the mall after close and as I get to my van the front tire is completely flat.  Now I have a flat and no spare tire.  I run across the mall to catch a friend who drives me home.

Tuesday I wake up feeling certain that today John will get the job we have been waiting for.  We learn later that my gut was right and go to bed feeling very happy and relieved.  However leading up to that experience we have to solve the van problem.  We drive the brake grinding blue car over to the mall where John pumps up the tire with the compressor and manages to drive the 5 miles home just before it goes flat again.  I continue on with the brake grinder out to my parents home.  They are in Florida for the winter and so I trade our car for "jer's pt".  My dad's red pt cruiser with vanity plates.  I feel so cool. 

The entire time I am switching cars Isabelle is freaking out that I am getting rid of the blue car, telling me she hates the red car and then begins to list all the places she will not go in the red car.  I also got stuck momentarily on their unplowed driveway and banged my head on the side of the car so hard I lost the back of my earring.  As we drove home I finally told Isabelle I didn't like the red car either but life was not fair and she needed to STOP TALKING!  She wisely sat silently the rest of the way home and surprisingly didn't complain once the entire week.  And I must confess I sort of enjoyed driving Jer's PT, a little car with much better pick up than our old van.

Once John got a job we decided priority one would be fixing up the fleet.  Saturday was the day to do the work and it couldn't have gone better.  He pumped the tire up again on the van and drove it to a used tire store we go to.  They had tires that fit our van for way less than I thought we would pay.  And while he waited John was able to walk next door and pick up the brakes he needed for the blue car.  He had planned to drive out with Jers pt, change the brakes and come home with the fleet intact but got distracted with picking up part of Isabelle's birthday present. 

Isabelle is getting a "big girl bed" for her birthday.  We had everything but the mattress and a can of paint to match the bed to the rest of her furniture.  I had been on craig's list wanting to spend under $100 for a twin mattress and finding several good looking ones that we were going to check out that afternoon.  Then John remembered a buddy of his mentioning getting their teenager a new bed.  He called to see what they did with the mattress and they guy GAVE us their old mattress.  So after putting much cheaper than expected tires on the van he went to pick up Isabelle's new MUCH cheaper than expected mattress.

Feeling so accomplished already at only 1pm we decided to relax and do the blue car after church.  Although it wasn't quite as smooth, John made the 20 minute drive out to my parents house without the keys to the blue car causing him to take and 1-1/2 hours to do something that should have taken less than an hour.  Back home with his tools he got the part off but then ended up running around in the cold a little more than usual to find a car parts store that would turn the roters for him just before closing on a Sunday night but now the brakes are changed and our fleet is back in service.  Friday John will have a friend make the final repairs on his work van and we will be ready to go wherever the road leads us.

Is it weird that I have more than one post with the label "car troubles"?  What does that say about me?  Are we really back in the car repair stage of our lives again?  Oh well, it was fun the first time and with so much added wisdom in our lives it has been fun the second time as well.  So far...

So that's why the battery died

I just knew you needed the follow up to our week of things going wrong. Well after the craziness on Monday and Tuesday the rest of week seemed to be getting back to normal, then Friday came. It was a busy day with morning playgroup and then going to church to drop off our donations to the sale and assess what had been dropped off so far and fielding several phone calls about the sale. Because we were having friends over for dinner I finally had to end my fun with the church sale to get some food and get home to do at least a little cleaning before they arrived. As I was walking into Whole Foods around 3:30 my cell rings (I had it with me, yeah me). It is John. Just wanted to let me know that on his way to pick up a couch from someone for the sale, on the other side of town, his work van caught on fire. No need to worry. He put the fire out with a cup of Mountain Dew and then the fire department came and shook a bottle of Aquafina on it to make sure he didn't miss anything. Now he was on the side of the freeway trying to figure out who could give him a tow and just wanted to keep me in the loop. Well I told him I would buy some food and call him when I was done to see how that was going. The rest of you might have just called a tow company but my husband is cheap and knows people and felt he could get a friend to help him. Well it turns out his friends are at work at 3:30 in the afternoon and the police didn't want his van there more than an hour. Finally, worrying more about my dinner with friends than anything else, I told him to suck it up and get a tow. He made it home an hour before our guests arrived and the dinner party was saved.

Apparently the alternator in his van was going bad and finally decided to go out in a literal blaze of glory. For those of you who aren't the expert that I am with all my experience watching John work on cars, an alternator's purpose is to continually recharge the battery. Thus why John's battery died, not getting properly recharged. Once he got it out he discovered that during its long slow death march it was impeding his air conditioners ability to spin and therefore work and is optimistic that he will actually have cool air this summer making all our lives so much better.

Thought you needed a picture of it all tuned up and ready for another work week. It rocks, I know. You all wish you owned a $500 1990 GMC Vandura.

The fun thing is that Jake decided to help him with the repair. This has been something that has saddened me over the years, I haven't felt John has taken Jake under his wing for car repair. Yet John will remind me that Jake has not wanted to be taken under his wing and he doesn't find joy in forcing him to sit out there and work on the car. So you can imagine my thrill to go out there and see my son under the vehicle putting in the new spark plugs and John giving him direction. There is hope for those men yet.

So cell phone firmly in hand, work van running like never before, this is sure to be a smooth and carefree week.

How did we live before cell phones?

I was enjoying my sister's post about her vacation in Florida and the things that went wrong. I was thinking about her comments regarding her tendency to freak out quickly when things go wrong. We have always been opposites in this area and I was particularly thinking about it yesterday when something went wrong, day 2, in our life and I was just sitting back relaxing. I wonder what will go wrong today.

Monday evening I had planned to meet 3 girlfriends for coffee at a Barnes and Noble at 6:30. These are dear wonderful girlfriends but not exactly prompt, on time girlfriends. I arrived at Barnes and Noble around 6:40 and was the first one there. I usually call the next most prompt friend to determine her arrival but discovered I didn't have my cell phone. After a brief moment of panic I decided it wasn't a big deal not to know the exact moment she would walk in the door and I could just relax and check out the books while I waited. After all I didn't have a cell phone for years as a child and early adult and yet somehow managed to meet friends and navigate through my life. Around 7pm I decided to order a drink and flip through a magazine while I waited. At this point I thought it was a bit strange that I was still the only one there and started wondering if I had gone to the wrong Barnes and Noble. At 7:30 I finally asked someone to call the other store and see if my friends were in the cafe there. Initially the woman said there was someone looking for a friend but then she couldn't find anyone looking for me. I decided that an hour was long enough to wait and it was time to go home. John, Jake and Isabelle were all at scouts so I would have the house to myself for a little while. I got home and walked directly to my phone where there were multiple messages from all 3 girlfriends. Turns out they probably were the ones looking for me at Barnes and Noble but had decided to drive across the street to Cheesecake factory instead and were all panicked about what had happened to me. Well since the location I was supposed to meet at was 2 miles from my home rather than the 7 miles I decided to drive, I hopped back in the car to arrive 1-1/2 hours late for our night out. When I arrived I told the hostess, "there are 3 women here who probably think I am dead on the side of the road.". We laughed about my mistake and stayed til closing. Apparently I can no longer navigate my life without a cell phone. Also, apparently I don't listen very closely when people tell me where to meet them.

Well that was an adventure, they happen, now back to regular life. So yesterday I am reading the very blog post from my sister that I mentioned at the top when my husband calls. After asking me what I am doing and making some brief chit chat he says, "well since you aren't doing anything can you come get my van started?" Apparently he had left something charging in his work van all day and killed the battery. I left Isabelle home with Jake and hopped in the car for a drive through early rush hour traffic to find him at the home of his client and give him a jump. I pull up, he opens the hood of my van and I say, "so you have the cables right?" He looks at me and says he was going to use the pair in my van. Interesting, I don't have any in my van. I had briefly looked around our garage but didn't see them so assumed he had them already. Turns out they are in our car. So we each make a few phone calls to people we know living in that area and find nobody home to loan us cables. So into my van John goes and we drive off in a strange part of town in search of jumper cables. We find a $10 pair at a Superamerica about a mile away and back we go. Now since I likely have a mainly female readership and since you all are unlikely jumper cable experts I will tell you that a $10 pair of jumper cables are not of the highest quality. After getting back to the car John spent about 30 minutes connecting and unconnecting, wiggling and banging the cables while I reved up my van trying to get them to make a good enough connection so that the juice from my van could push through small and weak wiring to give John's van and little spark. I did get to go in and check out the bathroom remodel he is working on while we waited and since it was nice and sunny I relaxed with my foot out the window soaking up that vitamin D that is so lacking here in the winter. Finally John unhooks the whole thing and tosses the cables on the ground. I suggested he jump up and down on them but he just picked them up and put them in the back of his van. I then pull my van out of the driveway and watch him roll his van out of their driveway and then push it over to the side of the road. I watched as he huffed and puffed and drove the van over his foot. I asked him if he needed any help but he said he was fine. It turns out that we really can't get along without cell phones any more as John was able to look up the location of a car parts store on his phone and then get turn by turn directions with the built in navigation system on his phone. I managed to hit every red light on the drive there. We finally arrive back at the house with a brand new battery and John was able to install it while I continued to relax and listen to the radio. Finally 2 hours after I left the house John started up his van and was able to finish up his final work errand of the day. Of course I now have just over an hour until a meeting at church and absolutely no dinner happening so off I went to pick up Chinese

I think the reason I found the experience to be so relaxing is because it was a throw back to our poor and childless days when I would spend hours sitting around watching John work on our vehicles trying to keep them running yet another day. We quickly found our rhythm again as I was able to rev the engine on his hand signals and I think he has mellowed over the years as his frustration was kept in check and we kept a sense of humor about the whole thing.

So what will happen today? Well at the moment I think it might be related to me being late for work if I don't finish up this post and get dressed! I am off to discover the days great unknown.