So much can happen in a week

Five days since the last post! How ever have the three of you survived without know the cliffhanger ending to my car problems...the remote problems....the tree lawn? Fear not, the answers are here!



We forced the van back to the guy who put it back together and let him get a gander of the steering problems. His evaluation? Nothing that he could have done would have caused this impossible to steer situation and we should take it to Kia and have them check it out.



"So this is just a weird coincidence?", I said looking incredulous.



"Yeah, that's what I think", said the car guy, looking confidant.



Another fight to get the van back across town to Kia. A few hours later, the news was in. Amazingly enough, it was just a weird coincidence! What happened to the steering was not caused by the accident or by the repair. How about that?



The Man, in a burst of "getting things done", transplanted not one, but two trees from the side yard to the tree lawn. One is the little oak, which had massive roots and wasn't in the mood to get moved. The other is a little maple, which was much more obliging to get new digs. Now we'll have to wait and see how they do.



We picked up a new remote as well. The buttons are laid out weird and all the weight is in the wrong end. We're not happy with it, but it works.



Yesterday, Fearless Co-leader and I took all the girls to Kalahari for a giant day of water fun. It was a day filled with chlorine, very greasy pizza, screams and laughs. We couldn't have had a better time. My hat is off to other co-leader Tami. She fought through her fears and went down water slides when she really, really didn't want to, and then she went surfing! She put us all to shame with her bravery!

Pictures of all of this coming soon!

My van is back...almost

My van is home, physically out there in the driveway looking just wonderful. It ended up getting a new bumper and grill, of course. It also ended up getting a new hood and one of the headlights had to be replaced. They said "Wednesday or Thursday" and I ended up picking it up Friday. That okay.

What's not okay is how it is handling. On the way home the steering felt tight and a little jerky, but not terrible. Later on we all ended up going to the movies and the Man drove it. When we first headed out it was "Yeah, it does feel weird". By the time we got home it was, "No one is driving this again until it is headed back to the shop".

There was nothing wrong with the performance of my car after the accident. It only looked ugly, but it ran perfectly. Actually, it was a bit of fun to ride around all mangled up. I would shout things like "Hey! You think I won't hit you! Look at my car, man! I've got nothing to lose!" Things like that. Getting my van back now, only to have it actually worse than before the accident is really upsetting. Knowing that it's going to be going away again for who knows how long is even more upsetting. Now I'm going to miss some days of work for this as well. The cherry on top is that this Friday, I need those wheels to get a whole bunch of Girl Scouts to Kalahari for a day water park mania. So whatever those fellows did to it while they were making it pretty, it better be a quick and easy thing fix!

Oh, and the car place won't be open until Monday, 8 AM. As far as I know, they probably haven't even heard my very upset voice mail about this yet. *sigh*

The tiny annoyance of today was the stupid remote for the cable went belly up. This morning it was working; this afternoon, nothing. I hoped it just was dead batteries, but no, it's a dead remote for no reason at all. A quick pop up to the cable company will get us a new one without a bat of an eye from the worker behind the bulletproof glass. But, the cable office isn't open until Monday, 9 AM.

Luckily, the cable office and the car place are only a block away from each other!