After a year and a bit, I’m getting pretty good at this single parent 80% of the time thing. It’s not odd in my small town for the father figure to work in another locale which leaves the mom at home with the kids. Last year during the rock slide I followed an amazing woman through the backroads behind Summerland and Peachland, both of us going to Kelowna for work, the difference was she had a chainsaw in the back of her pick-up truck, just in case we came across any fallen trees. I SO wanted to be her!
One modification to our domestic life has been the response time if things break (which they do in any house). Before someone would phone a repair shop and everything would magically be fixed. Now they don’t get fixed unless I do it. Case in point, the toilets. First, the toilet in the ensuite bathroom had a wee leak (that seeped into the downstairs bathroom before anyone noticed, which reminds me: I gotta paint that ceiling at some point). I turned the water off on the toilet and told everyone to use the other two lavatories in our house. Problem solved … well, until the main toilet sprung a huge leak while we were away in Hawaii and a couple days later the one downstairs stopped flushing. The plumber was lovely. Apparently all our 19 year old toilets died at once. They all work again.
A month ago my car battery died outside the Middle School (HOW MORTIFYING – for my two teens anyway). So I called BCAA (actually, first I called the absentee partner who said “What do you want me to do?”, then I texted my friend and whined, then I called my father-in-law who came and picked up my embarrassed children, THEN I call BCAA – they came within 10 minutes). I needed a new battery, said father-in-law accompanied me to garage and we got that done. AND THEN … my car radio would not work. Apparently Hondas have this little deal where if the battery dies you need to reset the radio but I didn’t know the Code so … long story short, I locked my radio.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to drive all over the Okanagan sans music??????? It was the longest month of my life.
Yeah, I said MONTH. Geesh, there were promises by certain folks to take my car into the dealership but … busy-ness kept that from happening.
I should just note here that I have this pathological fear and distaste of car dealerships and mechanic shops. If I can fix it myself I will. If not, I will BEG to have someone come with me to such places of doom. Weird, I know, but what can you do?
Anyway, yesterday I Googled my car and radio and discovered that this is a common problem with this make of automobile. So following instructions on web, one phone call to local dealership service centre (and they were lovely on the phone … if anything else goes wrong I might even take the car in) and some tinkering around, I unplugged the fuse to the battery, waited 5 minutes, reconnected, entered the code and then listened to Conor Obrest for the rest of the day!
There is nothing like fixing a car issue that makes one feel like Queen of the Universe!
