No promises!: My Friday

Friday, August 25, 2006

My Friday

So. Here we are at Friday. It started out innocently enough, though a bit too early for my taste. Don't forget that we had a game the night before. I get up, get dressed, and go in to get my breakfast. My back? Still hurting.

I read the news and the comics (not necessarily in that order), and then hear Cam's alarm go off. Then I hear Cam go off, "Nnnnnnnnnnooo! No no no no NO!" Heh, I'm with ya, buddy. I get him up and going telling poo jokes (because there's very little in life that is funnier to a 7 year old than poo), and head to the kitchen to fix his breakfast. I go back down the hall to make sure he's out of bed and at least BEGINNING to get dressed, and once I get about halfway down the hall I hear him, dissolved in giggles. I step into the room and see him stepping off the last step of his ladder (bunk beds), bent in half, laughing. "What on Earth is so funny?" "Oh, I farted....it was disgusting!" Yeah. That's a prime way to start the day. BTW, Billy told me before I left that he heard the fart in question, and it was, indeed, quite disgusting. :)

So I get Cam to the bus and head off to school. We watched the video of the show from the previous night, and then afterward we mostly complained about how tired we all were. Group gripe. Oh, and played some scales, too, but cripes...it was a late night! I finished up there and headed to work. I zipped in and out, and hustled up to Hooters to meet TJ for lunch. This is where things went downhill, and FAST!

A little background for you-my van? On it's last leg. Half a leg, really. One of my students is the daughter of a local mechanic. He found out my van was screwing up and insisted that I bring it in to him. He looked it over, patched up a leak and said that I needed to start saving for a new car-he can temp fix it, but it's gonna break for good before long. All righty then! So in the months since then, it's become more...shall we say...quirky. Either the starter or the ignition or something in that general vicinity is going bad, because it doesn't like to start on the first (second, or even the third) try all the time. It's usually first thing in the morning, but not limited to then. Then there are the wipers. For as long as I've owned the van, every now and then turning a corner will turn on the wipers. No big deal, really. The go up, down, and stop. Usually. Lately, they've taken to coming on when I open the door to get in...before I put the key in the ignition. Then a few days ago it was misting...I turned them on to just swipe once and all hell broke loose...the wipers went to warp speed, and I was turning onto Gulf Beach Hwy before I had them under control again. File that away for future reference.

TJ comes into Hooters and tells me that my passenger rear tire is nearly flat. Frequent fliers here on my blog may recall this as the one that I spent 5+ hours at Wal Mart getting fixed on the first day of school. Bastards!!! We have a tasty lunch, and he walks me out to the van. He has to head out and do some errands, so I decide to hit up the Tom Thumb on Airport to fill up the tire-he can take care of it when he gets home. Riiiiiiight.

I pull into the Tom Thumb, park, get out and push the "push button to start" on the air machine. It growls into life, and immediately dies when I take my finger off the button. Uhh....maybe it's just a really quiet machine? Riiiiight. The machine is broken. I radio TJ and relay the news. He says he'll meet me in about 15 minutes. 10 minutes later, he radios to tell me that he can't meet me as (wait for it.....wait for it....) his battery died. I drive up Airport, turn onto Davis, and meet HIM at the Nextel store...limping along on a nearly flat tire the whole way. Well, fat lot of good that did, as I don't have jumper cables. Well, NOW what?

Billy! Billy's off! We call Billy. He agrees to meet us at the Wal Mart on Creighton (going to get the tire fixed). He'll drive TJ back to the Tahoe, jump it off, follow him to drop it off at the shop, and all will be well. Riiiiight. We get to Wal Mart and check the van in. We walk around...I complain that my back hurts. Billy gets there, and the van hasn't even been brought in the shop. Any of this sound familiar? Billy and TJ leave to go get the Tahoe and take it to the shop. I go get Angels and Demons by Dan Brown to read while I wait, wishing the whole time I had thought to bring my muscle relaxers with me.

About an hour to ninety minutes later, they page TJ. The guy says that the tire isn't fixable-there's a nail that's right on the edge and it can't be fixed. He filled the tire up with air, and it was safe to drive on but WOULD go flat again. ...sigh... TJ says to drive it home and we'll figure it out later. I'm desperate to get home and take something for my back. I'm driving down "W" Street when once again, my wipers went nuts. The rubber would have melted if they went any faster. I actually ended up pulling over into Bobe's parking lot and turning the car OFF. Did that stop the wipers? Nooooooo. I took the key out...they were unimpressed. I radio TJ again to let him know...ugh. It was a mess. They actually stopped when I cranked the van again. Dawn says my van is possessed. I'm beginning to agree.

Then I realize that it's almost 3, and TJ and Billy had just dropped the Tahoe off at teh shop and still had to drive out to Gulf Breeze and Midway....there was no way they'd get back in time to get Cam. I knew there was no way that I would get back out of the house once I walked in the door, so I just drove (limped?) out to the day care to bring him home. I'm ready for an uneventful evening on the heating pad and some nice, deep sleep. Wish me luck!

posted by Jen @ 6:17 PM

1 Comments:

At 8:12 PM, Anonymous said…

wow, I agree its possesed... its EEEEVVVIIIIILLLLLLL!

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