Crappy Day

Item: Pete had a tummy ache, so he stayed home from school today.

Item: I couldn't work on my beloved cookbook at all, because I needed to do the first chapter of another (much less fun) book so I could give that client an estimate for the whole project. It took me all day.

Item: Brought my minivan in for a 60,000-mile checkup. The scheduled maintenance was $490. The brakes were shimmying a bit; replacing the pads and machining the rotors was another $250. Three new wiper blades were a measly $20. Wheel alignment, $70. But then the whopper: Replacing the roller on the sliding door because it wouldn't close all the way? $480! Shit! And they said the other one is on its way out, but I said I'd wait for it to happen. $1340 is enough for one day, don't you think?

Item: I finally get a few moments of down-time while waiting for Pete at speech therapy. I settle in with my book, only to find that it's defective! Everything's fine from p. 1 to p. 128, then all of a sudden it's p. 97 again! I flip forward to the second p. 128, after which it jumps to p. 161! In other words, I have a duplicate set of pp. 97–128 and am missing pp. 129–160 entirely! Sheesh. A girl can't catch a break these days.

Comments

[Elena]

I seem to remember you saying (or is it "your saying"?) that you have a Honda Odyssey. Mine has been a lemon since day one. Your van seems to be pretty "young" to be costing you that much in repairs!

[Karen]

Yes, it is an Odyssey, but I've had NO problems with it whatsoever. It has few miles on it, but I've had it nearly 7 years, so it gets tons of wear. We use those sliders A LOT.

[Di]

I have a silver Odyssey (as does every mini-van owner in my town). Yesterday we saw a blue one in the Costco parking lot and I said to my husband, "She didn't get the memo." I like it.

My last car, a Durango, had the electric windows in the back go bad after about 6 years. It was something like $800 per door to fix it. Needless to say, we just never opened those windows.

With the big bucks you are making on the cookbook and the project for the new client, you should just get a Mercedes or something. You could put a bumper sticker on it that says, "My other car is a minivan."

[Karen]

Big bucks? Ha ha ha! Trust me, NO ONE goes into publishing to get rich.

Everyone in these parts (myself included) has the dark green Odyssey. I wanted the dark blue, but they weren't offering it that year.

[mommyralf]

That's nuts for a simple mechanical part like a roller to go bad. Talk about "not rocket science." They sent a man to the moon, uh, how long ago?