Randomness

About 4 weeks ago I had to take my car into the shop. While it was hanging out there, my daughter and I were hanging out here while we made plans to head to Chili’s. We figured we would make it one of our many mother/daughter days deciding also to head to Michael’s after dinner for some art supplies. The guy called me around 3:30 and said my car was ready to pick up. They still haven’t fixed it and that is a story for another day. So we went to pick my car up at the shop, it cost almost $400 to fix it; a coolant reservoir($230) and a throttle body flush(I thought I was getting a new one to be honest, I plunked another $139 for that thing). Picture the confused look on my face when the mechanic told me what those were and how fixing those two items may or may not fix the problem.

I often pray “Lord send me a godly mechanic husband”. I am still waiting.

On a positive note, I was just happy it happened on a payday weekend. God definitely worked a miracle there at least. I paid the guy behind the counter and it’s ten minutes before closing. My daughter and I head out the door to my car and she hops into her seat and is already buckled and glued to her Iphone in a matter of seconds. It’s about 10,000 degrees out(that’s what it felt like as beads of sweat dripped down my forehead), I open my door and stick the key into the ignition, turn the key…”click, click, click…“, I think to myself “this cannot be happening” and I turn the key again…”click, click, click...” I know that sound all too well… It’s the sound of a dead battery.

I go back into the shop and inform the guy behind the counter that my car won’t start. They are closing up and shutting off lights and the one guy says to the other guy, “Did Barb just say that her car won’t start?”

What I wanted to say was, “Yes Barb did, and Barb is very hungry but will still smile because she is trying very hard to be like Jesus in this moment, despite the fact she just plunked down a good portion of her check for her car to be running and it’s hotter than bacon in a frying pan out there.” What I said instead was “Yes, that is exactly what I said. I believe it’s the battery. It’s dead.” So he took his little machine out there to see for himself what I said was true, and sure enough it was dead. He didn’t need the little machine, I know the sound of a dead battery. So I ended up spending another $149 for a new battery that has a 5-year warranty. This desert heat eats up batteries, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I get two more free batteries in that five year period.

He finally installs the battery and finally we are on our way to Chili’s. It was a very good meal. We had a relatively good time. We played our usual games on the little machine there on the table, enjoyed our appetizers and our meal. We were finally ready for dessert. My daughter isn’t much of a cheesecake fan, so we opted for the hot fudge cookie dessert with the ice cream on top.

The waitress brought it to our table and I was talking to her about how to redeem my free rewards item and I grabbed my spoon as I was talking to her. She walks away and I dug into that dessert not realizing how toasty hot that hot fudge really was until it hit the right corner of my top lip.

I jumped and my daughter laughed so hard.

Then I started laughing and we just kept on laughing. I then proceeded to say “Is that pan hot?” and I touched the goofy thing.

She laughed even harder.

We were happy to be heading to Michael’s. However, as we drove to the mall we noticed the parking lot was quite empty. It was only 7 p.m. It was then we realized all the stores closed at 7. I am not going to dwell much on that C-19 word floating around these days. It’s gotten enough attention and I am not pretending it doesn’t exist, but all I want to know is, does that C-19 come out after 7? I want to know. The sun was still up. People were eating food at the restaurants. Does it only like to visit art supply stores and clothing, shoe and party stores attached in strip malls after seven?

We seriously didn’t understand why all those stores were closed, but the Walmart down the way was open.

Interesting.

We were a tad bit annoyed, then we laughed about how ridiculous it was that they closed so early and realized we couldn’t control it(the stores being closed at a weird hour) but we knew we could control how we reacted to the minor inconvenience. I just drove us back down the road into the sunset. We arrived home, grabbed our food out of the car, hopped on Netflix and enjoyed leftovers later on that evening.