The garage door wouldn’t open. We use the garage door to get in and out of the house. I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I had to wait at home all day on my day off that was supposed to be a relaxing, stress-free day, for the garage door repair man to arrive. When he did arrive, he said I had broken springs and would need to pay $456 to replace them both. This was obviously not an expense we had planned for that month. I think I’ll move to Australia.
The dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree with various warning lights and it was time to take in my car for some maintenance and repairs. I got the news that it needed a great deal of work and that it would cost $5,000 to make everything right. $5,000 for my 2011 Honda pilot that is worth between $4,500 and $6,500 according to Kelly Blue Book. We had also discovered, through some deep dives by my father, that the 2011 Honda Pilot also had an engine defect that made it burn oil. Since they wanted me to replace the timing belt on an engine that might die because of a defect, we decided to only get the safety requirements completed so that it was safe to drive. Brakes and control arms and bushings $1,700. I was on the road again.
The next morning after I had dropped the kids at daycare, as I was traveling at 65 miles per hour around 465, my tire blew and I was able to limp to the side of the road. I called AAA for a tow and they were there in 24 minutes. As the wonderfully nice tow truck driver was pulling up my vehicle, he told me it wasn’t my tire and that the wheel wasn’t moving, so it was something else...possibly the control arm. It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad morning. I was thinking about moving to Australia.
Back to the same repair shop we went. Once we arrived, the shop was very apologetic and said they would look into it right away and take care of the issue. It ended up some bolt broke (my father feels it was not a broken bolt, but someone forgot to tighten them down) and they would need to replace the wheel I had shredded. They wouldn’t get the wheel until next week, bu they put on my spare and I could use my car for the holiday weekend.
Before I came to pick it up, I had an outdoor event that I had to attend for a couple of hours. I was under a tent and only came out for 30 minutes to get something to eat. Well of course I got completely burnt on my shoulders and neck from that 30 minutes and was hurting. That night, there was a horrible storm. There were strong winds and it poured rain. The kids were freaked out. Then the power went out. The power was still out early the next morning, at 4am I thought we should get some ice and get everything in the fridge and freezers iced down. We did that in the dark and were back in bed before 6am Saturday morning.
When the power was still out in the morning, we thought it was weird, but then saw 23,000 people didn’t have power so we thought it would take a little time and we would be patient. I decided to take the kids out to grab some lunch. When we got home, I noticed a burning smell coming from the car and they front wheel was very hot. Shit! And of course the repair shop is closed until Wednesday for the holiday weekend. It was the start to another terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
Sunday morning brought no power and no car, but the number of people without power was down to 12,000. Great job lineman! But it was getting harder to entertain the kids in the dark after the usual shadow puppets and hide and seek. We did have a birthday party to attend so that broke up the day. The kids had a ball for a couple of hours and then another nasty storm blew in. By the time we made it home, we were soaked from getting caught in the rain. Checking the total we found that the number of people without power had gone up not down. Ugh! We all got dried off and settled and we realized we had no food for dinner. It had been almost 48 hours since we lost power and we had now lost all the food. Coolers can only work for so long. Another fast food trip and $300 of groceries in my future if the power ever comes back on. Blah!
It is now Monday morning and I am sitting in the dark at 5:30am writing this and hoping my battery holds out. We are going on almost 60 hours without power and I am so over it. It is hot without AC and there is so much laundry piled up that we are almost out of clean clothes. The count is 7214 people without power in Indianapolis, and I am one of them. It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad 2 weeks. I am scared to see what the next 24 hours brings. That’s it...I’m moving to Australia!!!
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