fixin' the jeep

Daniel had a flat tire on the Jeep on Friday and since we were heading out of town for the weekend, we had to wait until Monday to get it fixed. I took the Jeep to the Goodyear place where we get all of our car maintenance done. It's nice to have a place you trust. I had taken Khaki to the vet earlier that day just for her annual visit since I had the Jeep and didn't have to worry with the dog being in that vehicle. Granted, the Jeep is 14 years old, but is still running and Daniel vows to drive it until it goes kaput. (I have no clue how to spell "kaput".) Anyway, I take the dog back home and stop and get Charlie and I lunch, hoping that this will help pass the time while we wait on the flat tire to be patched. Below is Charlie's lunch. What else would you expect? :)

The tire was unable to be patched and I was informed that the other three tires were needing to be replaced. Figures. So, $400 later, there are 4 beautiful new tires on Daniel's Jeep. Atleast we got a good deal on them. But, this also meant that I had to wait another 45 minutes to an hour for the tires to be installed. That's a problem with a 2 year old who has already finished his Happy Meal. Now what? Ooo, magazines with pictures of cars! Oh, there are also magazines with motorcycles! Yeah, that lasted 5 minutes. By this point, Charlie has also drunk about half of my sweet tea so the sugar and caffeine kick in. You'd think I would learn. He is climbing on chairs, behind the tv, between the chair and the glass windows and under tables. Atleast he's occupied and not screaming. He kept pointing to the gumball machines saying "ball. ball." After he gets bored with the climbing thing, I pull out a quarter and get Charlie a gumball. Luckily, he has no idea what good sugary splendor a gumball has and proceeds to roll it on the floor. (He didn't chunk it at me. For that, I was so thankful.) He also kept putting it back in the gumball machine where it came out at and then would look at me with his hands turned up and say the usual "uh, uh, ball?" in order for me to respond, "Where is the ball?" We proceeded to play this game for a while which tickled the guy who was also sitting in the waiting area. Other activities with the gumball included: rolling it across the table and it hitting the floor which Charlie then had to go chase it; rolling it across the whole waiting area which I then had to fish it out from under the TV stand; me yelling at Charlie to get it out of his mouth (yuck!)...this only happened a couple of times but I can only imagine what germs were on the thing; Charlie trying to hide it under my legs; and lastly, Charlie throwing it and it hitting the wall which meant it landed on the floor in two pieces. After that, Charlie kept repeating the work "broke" until we left. He would point to the pieces and say "ball? broke." I couldn't help but laugh at this. So, needless to say, when in doubt, buy a $0.25 gumball. You'll get every penny's worth out of it!

And, to top off my wonderful "fixin' the jeep" post...Daniel drove it to work yesterday with brand new tires. (Also, remember, we just put new brakes on it...see the post "busy, busy" if you missed that one.) He went to drive it home and...it wouldn't start. Again, figures. He tried to jump start it but no luck so I drove over to pick him up. He had it towed today back to the Goodyear place. There goes that $69 dollars to the towing company. Spark plug...gone. Battery contact wiring...shot. Needs a major tune-up...670 smakeroos! We opted for the $40 "get it running again" option and will now be driving it as little as possible. Since I am home most days, we can deal with only one car. No biggie. Beats taking on a car payment.