The Most Expensive Vacation I Didn't Take

Or alternatively titled, It Is God's Plan, After All.

We made it to Mt. Airy Friday night and a couple of times on the way, my hubs complained about the clutch getting "stuck" halfway to the floor after he shifted. We thought, "hmmm" but didn't do much about it until we left the festival to go to the hotel Friday night. It stuck at least 3 times in the 2 miles to the hotel and each time he had to stick his foot under it to lift it back up. We decided we would get it to a shop first thing the next morning, and went to bed happy.

Easier said than done: although there were three car shops within view of our hotel, none belonged to Mazda, only two were open, and only one (the sketchiest looking of the bunch) had a mechanic who could do more than the basic oil change. At this point, it was freaking me out to drive the thing b/c it was stalling all over the place. The mechanic at the Snappy Lube or whatever said it would be TWO HOURS before he could even look at it to tell us if he could fix it or not. So instead we spent nearly an hour on the phone with our insurance carrier trying to weigh options for a tow, a dealership, and a car rental. The news was not good. All would cost an arm and a leg, and with it being noon on Saturday none were getting the car looked at before Monday. With a rear-facing infant seat and being 35 miles from civilization, our options were considerably decreased.

So I did what any girl would do in this situation: I called my mommy. And she is all kinds of awesome, so she drove 2 1/2 hours to pick us up and take us back home to get a rental car while our car was also being towed to a dealership near home (yeah, that cost more than we were planning to spend on our little weekend vacation).

This may sound like a really crummy weekend. But it gets worse. Last night before J's bedtime, he was burning up and cranky (he had been running a low grade fever earlier) and I checked his temp and got 103.5. YIKES! We luckily were able to keep our cool heads and gave him a tepid bath and some fake Tylenol and his temp dropped 2 degrees in an hour. The nurseline said to call if it dropped less than 1 degree in an hour, so we were safe, put him to bed, and his fever continued to drop overnight.

When we were getting ready to turn in, we noticed that a leak was coming through our living room ceiling. It's right under the master bedroom, but we hadn't used the shower since yesterday morning. In any case, we put a bucket under it and went on to bed. Luckily, it seems to have stopped despite the crazy rain we've been getting, so it's likely a pipe in the bathroom that we will have to call (and pay) someone to repair. I can't even process that right now, so we're just going to use the guest bathroom and schedule someone to come Friday morning. At this point, it's almost comical.

But here's the next bit of news: a little while ago, baby boy tripped and busted his lip on a toy truck, and you know how those injuries bleed. So, I gave him the cool compress as long as he would stand for it, put him down for an early nap, and called the pedi. Between the fever, the mysterious bug bites on his legs, cheek, and arm, and the busted lip, I'm just going to feel better if he sees a doctor.

Now I'm online researching the Hyundai recall and trying to argue with the car rental place about whether our rental car is part of this recall, and why I was told if we needed to extend it we would receive the same ultra-affordable rate, but when I called to extend it the rate is 3 times what we're paying now.

Sometimes, you just have to lean on God and know that there's something he's trying to teach us out of all of this, like maybe we should be thankful that we have amazing family willing to loan their hotel room to us on a hot afternoon or drive 300 miles to pick us up, great bosses who don't bat an eye when we say "I know I am already taking two days off this week, but I also might have to leave early another day to take care of some stuff" or a hubby who is there by my side through all of it. If the worst thing we get is a busted lip and some repair debt, we're doing ok.

For those of you HOPEFULLY having a better weekend/week than me, why not extend your good fortune by entering my great giveaway? It's the last day to enter, although I doubt I will have the time or energy tomorrow to select a winner, but I will announce by Wednesday who the lucky person is!