Dash. Dot. Dash. Dash. Dot.

[lydamorehouse]

"Dash. Dot. Dash. Dash. Dot. Ampersand." is how Mason swears. No, it's not morse code. He gets that from reading my adult comicbooks where the words are blanked out with a dark line, looks like a dash, I guess. Plus, the daily comic strips do that thing with all the various dingbats.

I'm swearing today because of the dash-dot-dot car. I spent much of yesterday afternoon and evening waiting on Triple-A. (I guess it's a busy time of year for them, eh?) Anyway, my dash-dot-dot car, as you may have read yesterday, had a dead battery in the morning. seanmmurphy was kind enough to drop by on his way to work and give us a jump. As I said I would, I went out around noon to make sure the dash-dot-dot car would start. It did. Just for good measure I ran it for a few minutes. Then when it was time to pick up Mason at three in the afternoon, guess what? Dead battery. And I KNEW I couldn't get to Crossroads in time to get him. Luckily, we've been making friends with Mason's school friends' parents. Jason (Ava's dad) was able to pick Mason up and drop him off at our house on the way to get his other son from daycare... which was well above and beyond the pale of awesome. In the meantime, I wrestled the battery out of the car thinking I could either a) bring it inside to see if warming it up helped and/or b) swap it out for one of the various old batteries we have in our basement (don't ask. But if the fall of civilization comes, we'll be ready!)

None of that worked, but I was able to finally get the tools out of our frozen trunk as well as our other jumper cables.

Triple-A said they'd come around 6:30, so that meant Shawn had to bus it home. Mason wanted spaghetti for dinner, so we had that, while I anxiously waited for my cell phone to ring. A very nice woman came in a "jumper vehicle" to try to get the car started. My plan was to get it started long enough to drive it to Wheeler Sinclair (our mechanic) and have them look at the loose starter wire which I suspected to be the culprit. She tried everything. Nothing worked. Since the jumper vehicle isn't equiped to tow, they had to put in a second call for a tow truck... who wouldn't arrive until 10:30 pm.

I was bummed because, usually when we have to get towed, I ride with the guy to the destination and then (if it's our mechanic) walk home (it's about a mile - 12 blocks). It takes me 20 minutes or so, and is actually a very pleasant walk if I'm not trying to be anywhere by any particular time. But I was NOT looking forward to walking home at midnight, as it were. What's cool? When the tow truck came, the very nice guy said he'd just "dump it...er, drop it off" for me. He even volunteered to drop the key into their U-Haul key drop box. Wow!

We arranged to have a cab take Mason and I to school and I planned to bus myself back home, but Jason (Ava's dad) gave me a ride to my favorite coffee shop on Milton (near Victoria) and Grand. I got my coffee and walked down to Sinclair on Grand and Wheeler. (Maybe 20 blocks?)

At the service station, I showed the guys the loose wire because they told me they were able to start the car up with a jump. As I was jiggling the wire to show them how loose it was, part of it fell off. We both loked at each other and the mechanic said -- totally deadpan, "Yeah, that could be a problem."

Sometimes I love Minnesotans.

I'm home now, at any rate, and mostly warmed up after my three mile hike. I guess I don't need to go to the gym today, eh?

Comments

[seanmmurphy.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, that could be a problem." Priceless.

[cammykitty.livejournal.com]

Yup, you've had your exercise, but I'll bet you could use another chai.