Friday, July 25, 2008

When the hubby's away, I will play...man of the house.

OK, someone tell me something.  Is there a written order in the Marine Corps that says your stuff will go to *shit* (pardon my language) when your husband leaves for any amount of time!?
Yesterday, I noticed the wheels were getting tougher to turn on the van.  Thinking it was the heat (honestly, I guess I am stupid, cause I thought maybe the heat was building up friction between the road and the tire) I noted it in the back of my brain to put more air in the tires.
 Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid!  
I was very excited tonight to take Ethan to "Family Story Time at Foster library.  He didn't seem too receptive to the large amount of people so we left early.  Thankfully, because when we pulled in, I turned to back the car in, and noticed a funny sound from the front right tire.  Got out and checked and sure enough there was a screw in my tire.  Almost like someone turned it in themselves with a philips.  The tire was getting rapidly more flat, and I didn't want to wait until tomorrow (in the heat) to change it.  Enter "Women's Empowerment" Abbey.
"I can do this", I thought.  So I put the kids to bed, and out I went, in the total dark, to change a tire on an eight seater van.
Got everything ready and began the process.  After I got the flat off, I realized there wasn't enough distance to put the (inflated) spare on.  SO, I upped the jack to it's full height. 
Bad.  Bad, bad, bad!  
Maybe all those directions that are written in Kanji said, "be sure to put your emergency brake on!"  Cause as soon as I noticed the jack wasn't even with the ground, the car was already starting to roll forward.  I knew enough to get the hell out of the way, but I still tried to stop it from going.  Picture it, little, no medium ole me, flip flopped and bleached hair trying to stop a 4, 251 lb van (yes, I looked it up) from moving.  Fudge.  Only I didn't say fudge. 
It landed on the brake disk.  I think I broke the axel.  I don't think warranty would cover this.  I have no other car here.  Paul's is down the road.  2 carseats.  2 kids.  Repair center on other base. Oh. My. Gosh. What am I going to do?
Enter Neighbors.
First, I ring the doorbell of the guy ALWAYS looking to help us.  He's not home.  Then, the other one's house, that I know would help us.  He just had back surgery 2 days ago.  WTF!?  When he came out to look, his wife went to the new neighbors house that I had never met and had that husband come out.  He's southern! Oh Thank the Lord!  You fix cars!  You know it southern folk!  You all know how to fix cars!  And I love you for it!  If you ever need your windows scraped in February, I'm your girl!
So he comes out changes the position of the jack (which ironically wasn't in the right position at all, go fig!)  I put the parking brake on and within 10 minutes it was done.  He even fixed the brake disk protective cover thing so it wouldn't scrape.  Bless him.
So there it is.
Now let's see what else can go wrong between now and Sunday night!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

you did WHAAAAAAAT??? LOL!! WOW - You are my IDOL!!!

Anonymous said...

well, as Grandma F likes to say, Why wait till there's a man around, he probably won't do it anyway!?!

Yvonne LeBrun said...

You're so lucky you didn't end up under the car - you made my stomach hurt! Good on you for trying,next time just knock around a neighbors and save the hassle.