Take this morning for example. DH was all ready to leave this morning. He goes down to the garage, gets in his car and tries to start it. But it won't start. It's not the battery because you can hear it trying to start. DH came inside to let me know about the car. "What are we going to do?" was the primary question. We no longer have a third vehicle, since the brakes on DH's truck died a couple of months ago. So we're down to one car, and DH do not work anywhere near each other. Add on top of that the fact that we had EH's four month check-up appointment this afternoon that DH was scheduled to take EH to. DH tried the car again, and it started for a moment - enough so to get it out of the garage and into the driveway - but then it died again. He suspected the alternator.
What in the world were we supposed to do? I couldn't take DH to school because he needed the car in the afternoon to go to the doctor. And DH couldn't take me in to work because he was already running late.
My only hope was a co-worker of mine, who has given me rides to work on occasion in the past. So DH left, taking my car and leaving his car seat base behind. I called my supervisor to let him know that I would either be late or not in at all. About 20 minutes later my co-worker called me back. She agreed to not only pick me up, but to take Evan to day care as well! I'm not sure that things could have possibly worked out better than they did. We got to work about 40 minutes later - she was already running late and then add on the extra pick-up and day care drop off - but we got there, and I didn't have to waste a vacation day.
I can't help but thinking, "It's always something, right?" Yesterday, I had a migraine, today the car died. Neither were the baby's fault at all, but when there's a baby involved, everything becomes more complicated. In the past when I had a migraine I would just sleep the day away without a second thought. But you can't do that when you have a baby. When the car died, it was definitely a complicated situation but with a baby? Twice as much to think about. Not only do I need to figure out how to get to work, but how will we get the baby to day care? You need a car seat base to transport a baby. It takes an extra 15 minutes out of the way to go to day care. When DH picked the car up from the dealership instead of just running in to get the keys, he had to park get the baby out, carry him in, get the keys and then load the baby back up in the car. So many more steps than life without a baby.
And the car? Well, that's a funny story. They called DH to tell him that they couldn't find anything wrong with his car. It wasn't the alternator. It wasn't the battery. They said that "maybe" it was bad fuel in the line. So hopefully that's actually the case. Because I am not looking forward to the prospect of another day with only one vehicle!
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2 comments:
I can relate to how much a baby changes things - our latest issue was the U's Christmas party. It's this week and it took some juggling to figure out who could watch the baby so that we could actually go and enjoy the night. It's a good thing those babies are so stinkin' cute - otherwise this parenting gig would be that much harder. :)
We've been living this lifestyle for 5 yrs and thought we finally understood it all. ...until Maria started kindergarten this year, and now our family unit was in 4 different locations on any given day. The first time that became an obvious problem to us was when we had to drop a vehicle off in the AM for inspection. We had COMPLETELY forgotten that we had to get 5 people to 4 different locations in 1 vehicle. Amazingly, we all made it, and Joe (the driver/husband/dad) was only about 15 minutes late for work!
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