Saturday, June 4, 2011

It's been an up and down week



Some of Ms. M's flowers and baby birds in her yard.

Was it only last weekend I was in MA? No, no that's not right, I was there just 3 days ago too. Sectaurs and Minnie rearranged furniture, bought some new, and wanted to swap out a stored loveseat for one of his his big comfy bachelor-days couches.  He offered the couch to us, knowing ours had seen better days (most of them with him reclining on it). J had Wednesday off, so we took his truck down and hauled the couch back- missing the tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, thank-you-very-much. (spellcheck insists there is an 'e' in the plural for tornado, but it looks strange) By the way, that tornado was headed right for Mr C but fortunately died when it reached the next town over. Ms M was in D.C. for work and missed the excitement.
Anyway, we have a very nice new-to-us sofa and Boomer has been told he is not allowed up there. The old one is living in J's shed until Salvation Army can pick it up.

So, that was a good day, until J found what we assume was a deer-tick-bite-gone-bad on his leg. The Dr. wasn't sure what caused it, but she said it was infected so he's on antibiotics for 10 days. He had to go back yesterday for a 5 minute followup "yes, it's still there" visit which cost another copay.

The tailgate lift handle broke while I was at Ms. M's- well, the handle didn't break, it just pulled out of the crunchy rust around it. And our registration and inspection is this month, so a decision has to be made soon. Do we fix it or not? We drove it to a neighbor's collision center and he checked it out for us. Verdict is he wouldn't spend the money, considering that the rust we see is the final journey of corrosion that started inside and underneath. Plus the mileage, which was an elderly, but visually pleasing 171717 when I got home.

It could get fixed enough for inspection and hope to get another year out of it, but with our luck something mechanical would go next month. For sure, now that I've said that!   It sure has been nice not having any car payments for the last few years.  We have reluctantly started looking at buying a car.

We bought a Grand Caravan in 1987 when they first came out and had that for 13 years. It was wonderful having plenty of room and a window for each kid,even if nothing was powered then. The Caravan we have now is a 2000 model and boy howdy, have things changed! The new ones don't have keys! The nice saleslady showed us the remote starter, power doors and unlocker buttons and then offered the little black contraption to J so he could start the engine. Baffled, he held it out to me and asked where the key was? All I saw was a little red bump at the end, which she told us to insert in the hole on the dashboard. Son of a gun, it worked! Then the gear shift is on the dashboard as well, up behind and to the side of the steering wheel. We felt like bumpkins- old, out of touch bumpkins. We'll ease into this slowly and will test drive it another day.

Anything else this week? Oh yes, Shoeshine had hoped to bring Ladyslipper to RI to meet the rest of the family in July, but moving to a new apartment has gobbled up his budget. They might make it later, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. But on the up side, here's the latest photo he sent via phone. Ladyslipper was "reading" out loud to herself.

2 comments:

Wendy said...

Ha! I love it when babies start "reading" to themselves.
Enjoy that new couch, and the new vehicle. I can never figure out any of those keyless features either. I just keep buying used cards in the hope I'll never have to learn!

Unknown said...

That's a cute photo of Ladyslipper, she 's getting big!
I like your new couch! We have a Caravan, and I love it! I have been kind of eyeing up the new ones, they look neat, especially the ones that have a table in it - but don't really want to commit to the payment.