my day

I'm just looking for someone to whine to. Will you be a pal and let me cry on your shoulder? Although our morning was so ridiculous I haven't cried about it, all I can do is laugh. It's that bad. This may be long so if you aren't interested stop here before you are invested in this, because I'm sure you've got better things to go do. Like look on facebook... ;)

I had a quick errand to run this morning, just dropping something off at a friend's office downtown. Neil was home, Rigby was napping and I asked Porter if he wanted to go for a drive with me. We drove downtown and as I pulled into the parking stall in front of my friend's office the gas light came on. No big deal, there's always plenty of time before it really means it. I left the van running so Porter could watch 'New Groove' (don't judge, you've all left your kids in the vehicle to run something inside quick....) and I went inside to take my friend her stuff. When I came out the van was still on, as in the movie was still playing, but it was not running. I tried and tried to start it but nothing. **Insert a quick back story here - a couple summers ago in Edmonton my friend Sarah and I got stranded when I parked my van on a downward slope when it was low on fuel and it wouldn't start again because it thought it was out of gas... long story short, many strong men and a jerry can of gas later we got the van on level ground, filled up and it started without a sputter.** Thinking back to this I figured that's what was happening this time too as I was parked on a similar slope. I called Neil and asked him to be my knight in shining armour and come rescue us with some gas. So lame, who runs out of gas? He took the monitor to our neighbor and hopped in his car to come save us. We know the van battery is weak and needs to be replaced soon so instead of showing up with gas he came with jumper cables assuming the van just needed a boost. He tried a few times but the van would not start. We decided to go get some gas (as someone first suggested, just sayin') and try that. We all hopped in his car, took Porter home to the neighbor (thanks Vicky!) and then went and filled a jerry can with gas. On our way back to the dead van there was a loud *POP* Edit: Neil just read this and said, "POP!?" it was a KA-BOOM!!" under the hood of the car and then smoke started pouring out from under the hood and into the interior of the vehicle. Like billowing out. Smoke. Everywhere. We looked at each other and laughed. Could there be worse timing for one vehicle to die than when you are on your way to rescue another one? We managed to pull into the spot right beside our van and got out so we didn't die from the nastay-ness that was smoking us out. As Neil was filling the van with gas and realizing it still wouldn't start, a man in coveralls walked by and I asked him to come look under the hood of the car (wearing coveralls means you know something about cars right? I thought so.) He did and told us what had happened and said we shouldn't drive it and needed to tow it away. We stood back and looked at our van that wouldn't start and a car that had just exploded and I just want to say that when you're gazing into each other's eyes, holding hands on your wedding day and everything is bliss you don't think of moments in your future like this. I just kept telling Neil to laugh because at that moment it's all we could do. We formulated a plan and decided to walk to Neil's brother's office downtown and borrow his car so I could go home to the boys and Neil could figure this out. On the way home we called a tow truck for the car (we figured we could still get the van to start) and then Neil dropped me off. He drove back to meet the tow truck and I soon received a text that he got the van to start. Who knew this day would produce some good news? Apparently the tow truck guy tried to boost it again without success and suggested Neil go and get even more gas and eventually with another jerry can full it started as if it had never had a problem. Note to self: never let the van get lower than a quarter tank of gas and then park on a downward slope. Noted. He hopped in the van and met the car at the auto shop where they did some investigating and told us that if we wanted to spend x-amount of money, which is more than we even paid for the car, they would fix it but strongly suggested it wasn't worth it to which we agreed. The wreckers wouldn't pay a thing for it so Neil signed the registration, took off the plates and walked away. That's that. The silver lining on that dark cloud is that Neil had been meaning for a few weeks to take the car in for a wheel alignment among other things and since he didn't, we just saved a bunch of money on a car that was preparing to explode.

So, to summarize, I left this morning at 10 to run a quick errand and now later today we're down one vehicle and learned a valuable lesson about another. As most people try to do in these situations we chose to look on the bright side of things - our great van could have had a real problem, the car could have chosen to explode on any number of worse occasions, although I really appreciate that it did it when it was being used to rescue us, I got a kick out of that. OR the car could have started on fire as the mechanic said it very well might have. Although then we would have got insurance money for it. I suggested Neil drive it around the block at the shop to see if he could get it to flame up but he wasn't too impressed with my willingness to risk his life for some money. I suppose that's fair.

Anyway, nobody died, well except our car in a seriously dramatic fashion, and although that's a pain in the rear I'd rather that than a real tragedy. Anybody's day top mine?

stranded in the van, before we knew just how bad things were going to get