Yesterday I went over to the local auto repair place to have my van inspected. Cole was home to watch the kids and I told him I would be gone about an hour. He was ok with that. I brought a book, so I could sit and read. I was prepared.<\/p>\n
I got there and went into the nice clean lobby (really, it’s a new place and it’s very clean), told them what I needed, and they started asking me questions. Like, did I bring the registration form with me–uh, no. Do I need that? Make and model—uh, 98 Caravan, I think. Then I had to give them my keys, which I unthinkingly gave them the whole glob of keys and keychain, because My nails aren’t strong enough to get the key off without some severe breakage. He told me to plan on an hour and a half wait, and then I started to panic. <\/p>\n
I went and sat down in the waiting area with about 5 other people and that queasy feeling got stronger. I took out my book and looked at the page. I tried to start reading but couldn’t concentrate. Can’t. Stay. Here. I had to get out. But I had no car. How was I going to get home? I got up and walked out of that place, searched in my purse for my cell phone. I could walk home, but that would take me about 25-30 minutes and I wasn’t really wearing the shoes for it. Who could I call to come and pick me up that wouldn’t hate me for inconveniencing them? I dialed Tess’ number, since after all I had picked her up from the gym once when her car wouldn’t start. No answer. Darn. So I called my next door neighbor and asked if she could please come and pick me up. “Sure,” she said. Bless you, I thought!<\/p>\n
I started walking, taking deep breaths and trying to aliviate the feeling of panic I was feeling. Stuck with no car is just a bad feeling. It seemed like forever for her to come and get me. It was probably more like 10 minutes. I felt like I was escaping from prison or something, so great was my panic.<\/p>\n
I failed in my mission. I hate the car repair place. I feel so stupid and helpless. Even when the mechanic called me later to tell me that the car doesn’t pass emissions and to ask how long has the check engine light been on, I felt totally confused and helpless and had to call my husband and ask him to call the guy back because honestly, I couldn’t really understand what he was saying. I try to act like an independant woman. A woman who can take charge of her own car issues, but in reality, I panic and hate that stuff. I’ll just go back to making the hubby take the cars in, and I’ll keep the job of the one who drives the other car and brings him home. I’ll let him keep the balance of power on car issues and do all the talking to those mechanics (who I swear aren’t even speaking English!) I will stick to my area of expertise–shopping–and leave the car care issues to the man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday I went over to the local auto repair place to have my van inspected. Cole was home to watch the kids and I told him I would be gone about an hour. He was ok with that. I brought a book, so I could sit and read. I was prepared. I got there and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paige.ericksonfamily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}