What a Week!

I have been meaning to post all week long and it just didn't happen.

So...where to start...on Monday, Steinvic got home from work and we decided to go up to our local and watch the first quarter of the Bengals game. We like to step outside for a cigar when the weather is cool like this, so I asked him if he had one and he said that there was a packet in his sweater. The sweater was in his car so while he had the door open, he offered, "Do you want me to drive?"

You must know that we take "my" car everywhere. It's newer, gets amazing mileage and it's tiny, so we can park anywhere. So, it was really odd to be hopping into his passenger seat for a routine jaunt anywhere.

He put the key in the ignition and...nothing. Dead again! We thought that was all behind us, considering it had gotten us home safe and sound from C-bus and had transported him to and from work on Monday with no problem, but there we were. I said, "Let's go to Auto Zone and get jumper cables. We should have a set anyway, and we can jump you and drop the car off at Goodyear tonight." Steinvic suggested Home Depot because it's closer and we could get there and back and still see the Bengals kickoff.

We got the cables, jumped his car, and he pulled out, me following in my car. As soon as he turned on his headlights, the car died. I pulled around in front of him and jumped him again so he could park. We decided to handle it in the morning when headlights weren't required.

Turns out, the new battery had a bad cell, and they replaced it gratis. We picked another "to do" from our auto maintenance list, and they planned to have it repaired and back to us at the end of Tuesday. But, once they got in there, found they needed a new part (no after market parts available) and had to order one new. A $200 bill became $800 and Steinvic needed my car to go to Columbus for work, so I hitched rides for two days from co-workers and my folks (Thanks, J, for offering to loan me your spare Jeep!) and when I picked up the car on Thursday night, they said, "The breaks really need to be replaced right away."

Really? Because we'd specifically asked about safety and the breaks and no one put them on the list when we took it in for the new battery last month. But because we want Steinvic's car to be safe, we sucked it up and got them fixed, too.

So here we sit, RAV 4 in good shape, last day of Indian Summer weather, Ohio State on TV, vegetarian chili cooking on the stove (using the last of my frozen Mom-grown tomatoes), and thank you notes strewn around, as I've been taking my turn with them today (Steinvic did a huge batch on Tuesday).

It's been a crazy week, but it feels really good to be sitting and relaxing with no real have tos... I hope you have some down time for yourself today, too!