Tuesday, August 30, 2005

I'm not sure I can stand all this excitement

Part 1 - And The Caravan Rolls On - Long frustrating weekend with our van needing to be jumped to start going down to not running at all even with being jumped. We finally gave up and Allan had it towed to (kills me to say this) the dodge dealership. Where we paid as much for their time to diagnose the problem as we did to fix it. A simple dead battery. Which I'll point out WAS what I SAID IT WAS and certain other males who frequent this house did not think so - going instead for more complicated theory's involving starters etc.

This has happened before with me and cars. Repeatedly. I should probably go take a class on auto repair - then people might listen to me better than this typical exchange:

Me - "It's the battery."

Family member - "How do you know it's the battery? Have you even looked in the engine?"

Me - "Well - no - I haven't looked in the engine - I just can tell it's the battery from the sound it makes when it does that thing when you try to start it and it doesn't do that other thing...."

Eyes roll and I'm ignored as usual.

This dates all the way back to when my old Buick died on me.

"The Buick is dead".

"But you drove it here - we'll take it to the shop - it can probaby be fixed."

"No it can't, it barely made it here - it's not repairable."

"So you are a mechanic now??? We need to take it to a mechanic."

"I'm telling you - it's doing a death rattle sound. The sound that happens before they tell you that it's not worth fixing and you'll be lucky if you can drive it to a junkyard".

"You don't know anything, you can't just declare a car dead, we're taking it to a mechanic..."

A $500 mechanic bill later, "Sorry - but this car is dead/unrepairable/ you'll have to get it towed to a junkyard".

That at least wasn't Allan that time. I'll just skip on to other things about right here.

Part 2 - Bite Me - The twins are teething and chewing on thing and anyONE within reach. All of us have at least one blue/black bruise mark from a twin chomp. Some of which have broken skin. Do not let body parts get close to those mouths right now! They also have bit each other. It's very obvious they are cutting more teeth - so we are hoping that once the teeth break the surface - the biting will become less frequent.

Megan making a silly face

Part 3 - We're fine. Really. - Michael ran a fever much of the weekend. We deceptively drugged Michael with children's motrin and went to Creekside anyway to show off the twins. This because the Pastor's wife there had sent the twins new sumemr outfits and we thought she should get to see them in them! It was nice to see people again but we came away knowing for sure we are at the right place in terms of church. Our children put up with it because "it's just for one week and we are only visiting but we like Grandpa's church better".

Maddy had her haircut on Sunday. I cut it myself. Not too bad considering she kept whipping her head around with no warning. Allan says she looks like Susie Derkins from Calvin and Hobbes. No photos yet. The weekends been too rough for photos.



Part 4 - Highlights from Monday at home - (This is the part about the "excitement". Thanks for hanging on for this long.) The kids locked us out of our room twice this evening. We couldn't find the key so Allan had to climb out the twins window and around through our window to unlock it. We may have to get a new doorknob.

- Maribeth likes to climb onto the kitchen counters and into the kitchen sink and get into untold mischeif

- lots of writing on walls

- twins ate quite a few tips off of markers

- 4 rolls of TP in one day/Maddy letting twins in/shutting twins into bathrooms. Need I say more about that? It'll be a miracle if the twins don't get sick from their upclose toilet water experience.

- The kids thought of a new game. It's called - "take mommy's keys off the hook and hide them somewhere in the house and see how long it takes her to find them". Allan just moved the key hooks into the office.

Sisters

- Michael making breakfast. It involved large amounts of cream cheese, butter and cheese slices.

- Older kids letting babies out in front of the house where I caught them about to attempt to stick things into the outside electrical outlets.

- Maribeth knows how to remove the outlet covers AND she likes to plug and unplug different things - despite repeating disiplinary attempts.

- Megan has learned how to undress herself. She thinks this is very funny. Unfortunately so do Michael, Maddy and Maribeth. Megan also learned how to say "cheese" today. But not for the camera - for cheese - the food. This is notable only in that so far she is the first child to say "cheese" for the FOOD cheese before learning to say "cheese" for a camera.

Wow - they are standing STILL

- Melissa is making leaps in learning to read. Which is good. There seems to be an inverse relationship with how much progress she makes and how much I work with her. Her jump in reading ability seems to be due to hours spent pouring over Daddy's Calvin and Hobbes collection. (which she left out too many times and now is mostly in shreds).

- there's more but I"ve mercifully blocked it out for now.

More as it happens.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh my, oh my, OH MY!!!

GMP

Sunny said...

Want to see pics of Maddy's haircut

Sunny said...

So CUTE! I've been thinking she'd look cute in a haircut just like that. PS I am now "sunny" instead of Jo bloggers. Because the other Jo's weren't blogging anyway.

Cheryl said...

I propose henceforth that Cheryl make all the vehicle maintenance decisions.

I am sure there are plenty of family members out there who will second the motion, so let's just skip all that and consider the resolution carried.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post.

LarryandJean said...

Hey, it could have been a LOT worse with the car. I'd rather fear the worst and be pleasantly surprised as you were this time.

Your van should have several good years left in it after all the maintenance done on it in the last 1 1/2 years.

OC