The good, the bad and the expensive

The weekend was a jumbled mess of good, bad and expensive.

First, the good:

Dancer had a dance competition on Saturday where her group did very, very well. She was so beautiful dancing. I am always in awe of her since my dance resume would list The Chicken Dance and The Hokey Pokey and I can't even brag about how good I am at those.

We cleaned out more boxes of things we don't need to hang on to anymore and got it donated to the 4-H garage sale. We had one truck and five van loads of stuff. Now we need to be vigilant not to fill those the cupboards and closets back up.

Mother's Day was wonderful, the kids gave me a cactus, bonsai tree and a bamboo plant. AND Almond Roca my most very favorite candy on the whole planet. AND we went out to dinner at really nice restaurant.

We got almost the whole lawn mowed. It is a big deal for us to have the whole thing mowed at the same time. It seems we only have time to mow it in sections, or we have the mowing done but not the trimming. It is now going to rain most of the week so I am sure it will long again by the weekend or maybe early next week since the temps are cold.

Grandma was able to pick us up and take us to the dance competition and loan us a car.

A good Samaritan stopped to help Dad push the car to the side of the road.

Spark got to ride in a police car.

Grandpa was able to rescue Dad and Spark in his car later that night.

On the way home from the dance competition, a police car pulled up behind me and put on his lights. Dang, I thought, I was going 65 in a 60 and slowed down as soon as I saw him. There was a truck that had just zoomed past me in front of him, zipped through the other traffic and I am the one he choose to pinch. As I edged to the side of the road to pull over, total dread pouring our me because I have never in my life had a speeding ticket and here I was going to get one driving Grandma's car with her sitting next to me, he sped past me and pulled over the truck. YES!!!!! I drove exactly the speed limit the rest of the way home.

Next, the bad:

On the way to Dancer's dance competition we stopped at a wayside rest and noticed there was antifreeze leaking under the car. We got back on the freeway, drove to the nearest town, pulled into a gas station to buy antifreeze and there was another puddle under the car. Pulled the car around behind the gas station to Burger King where we could get a good look at it and it was dripping so fast that it was almost a steady stream. A call went out to Grandma and Grandpa, who were shopping only about 25 minutes way, and they came to get us.

After Dad and Spark dropped Grandpa off at his house and started home, pouring more antifreeze in periodically was keeping the car going, they were crossing a busy four lane highway and the transmission went out on the car where it promptly stopped in the middle of the intersection.

When a policeman came to see what was going on, he offered Dad and Spark a ride to the nearest restaurant. When Spark was getting in the police car he banged his knee on something sharp in the back of the car and got a big cut on it.

The tow truck towed the car to a transmission place that Dad wasn't familiar with. Grandpa drove them up and down the streets of the town where they were able to find the car because the towing company didn't turn the flashers off on the car so it was sitting in a parking lot just flashing away.

Dancer's goat, Eeyore, has three seizures this weekend and that makes Dancer so upset. He is back to his normal perky self today.

Finally, the expensive:

The blue book value on our car, it is a van but for some reason we always call it a car, is $1,600. A new transmission is $1,460. That price doesn't include fixing the radiator.

New used cars, or vans, are so insanely expensive they give me heart palpitations just thinking about paying for one. Ugh, we haven't had a car payment for over a year and half and I rather enjoy it.

I wrote down the wrong work schedule for Dad and he missed the first four hours of his shift tonight. Even worse, we were up early this morning and he didn't take a nap this afternoon so it will be a really long night for him.


There's our weekend in a nutshell. Now we just have to make a decision on the car situation and hope it is the right one.