Proof that my car hates me and wants me to be unhappy (and poor)

Holy cow...do you know how much an ignition coil and 6 spark plugs cost?

$411.66

Dude! My car hates me!

Here is the quick story (if you are interested): yesterday Daughter and I went to the little town where we lived before buying our house in the sticks (stix? styx?). We dropped off some paid sewing and met up with a friend and her son (who is 6 days older than Daughter) for some coffee and a long walk. It was somewhere around 70 degrees so we wanted to enjoy the outdoors as much as possible. And we did. To the point where I was very tired indeed (pregnant, remember?). So we parted ways at about 3:15 or so, and Daughter and I scooted through the McD's drive thru on our way out of town so I could have a little salty goodness on the ride home. About 50 yards down the road my car started shaking wildly and making a wub-wub-wub noise. It also felt like it was going to stall, and the check engine light started flashing. I've seen the engine light go on before, but never a flash.

We pulled off into the parking lot of a Goodyear place (which we used for various car needs back when we lived there, conveniently enough), and I called the Hubster. He had me look under the hood (like THAT was going to accomplish anything) and then told me to head into the Goodyear and ask someone to check it out.

Mmmm-kay. So we have an exhausted, hot 11 month old who needs her afternoon nap, a sweaty pregnant woman who needs her McD's filet-o-fish meal (shut up, I am addicted), and approximately $7000 worth of borrowed sewing equipment in the back of the car (all that fancy embroidery I've showed you? Yeah, I totally don't own the machine, they lend it to me to do the work).

So blah blah blah, long story shorter, they hook my car up to "the computer" to diagnose the problem (boom! $90 immediately), I call Hub and wait something like 1.5 hours for him to show up (because he can't just run out of the office, and the office was about 40 minutes away to boot), and I try to entertain Daughter by feeding her little bites of my McD's fish sandwich. Luckily she loves fish. Also, I might have let her eat two very small fries. But I didn't give her any root beer. I have some standards. Anyway, Hub finally gets there, the service tech dude comes out to try to explain what they think is wrong, and then tells us they were supposed to go home 1.5 hours ago but stayed because I had no ride so they figured they might as well try to fix my car (this was at 5 pm). Which is nice. I've always liked this place because when I go for an oil change, they just do it and don't try to get me to buy anything else. Decent guys, really. They asked to keep the car overnight so they could be sure of the problem and repair it properly. So we unloaded the sewing equipment, moved the carseat, and headed out. The night continued to be a bit of a circus, involving some dinner, looking at cars, and a loooooooooooooong drive home - we finally got home at 9:30 and Daughter was so tired I just took her sweater off and let her sleep in her clothes. I was contemplating doing the same thing myself.

I'm sorry, that was kind of a long story about nothing. The moral actually is this: if your check engine light starts flashing that is BAD. I guess it's good I pulled right off the road because one of my ignition coils wasn't firing (or something) so the engine was pumping gas right out the exhaust system. Which can permanently damage the exhaust system, not surprisingly. So if your engine light starts flashing? Pull over. Get help. There you go. The end.

But! We are so getting a new car tomorrow! I don't think I'll share what it is, because that leads to financial information which is private (as opposed to the cost of a repair, which can happen to any of us). I'll just say it's kind of like a small SUV or a big hatchback car, depending on how you look at it. It's got 4-doors and the carseats fit (won that battle) but sporty (Hub's concern). And it's black. It looks super cool. Also it's a brand new model so we decided to do a 27 month lease, just in case it ends up having problems. But Hub is so excited - he has never owned a brand new car in his life, and this one only has 25 miles on it from test drives. I doubt he'll be letting me behind the wheel any time soon.

And! My mom is awesome. For many, many reasons. She got back to town today after more than a week away, and volunteered to drive me to get my car back - we were at my parents' house because of my OB appointment this morning, as my father stayed with Daughter so I could go to the office unencumbered. And she is watching Daughter Monday morning at 8 am so I can go to another MD appointment (a specialist), and then volunteered - without me even asking - to come to my house and stay with Daughter on Tuesday afternoon when I have yet another freaking appointment at the fetal monitoring center in the hospital where I will deliver. Yes, there is a bit of a problem but it is with me, not the babe. At least we are hoping it is not affecting the babe. Not to worry, I will share when the time is right. Now it's just tests and stuff. As of this morning the babe is growing, the heart rate is normal, my heart rate is normal, and things are going about 90% well.

Anyway, not only is my mom tireless when it comes to helping us out, she also brought me two super gorgeous skeins of Lorna's Laces sock yarn from her trip. Shazam! I will take photos tomorrow (dark right now), but suffice it to say the colorway blew my mind. I would never buy this yarn for myself at $10 per skein but my mother knows things are a little weird for me right now and got it for me as a gift. She is amazing. Here I am trying to think of a way to thank her for helping us so much and she gets a gift for me. Oy. Maybe I should knit this yarn up into socks for her?

I've been working a little on my sockapaloooza socks, but had lots of sewing to finish so that took priority. I've been given another sewing project to work on, so I need to get going - have to pay for that car repair somehow. But that's about it. I want to start some sundresses for Daughter but I guess I have time. The temps are going back down into the 50s next week.

And finally, this is random, but are any of you being totally inundated with ladybugs? My goodness, they are EVERYWHERE! And they dive-bomb us! I vacuum up a zillion of them every couple of days. Crazy.