Car Trouble

Time is still passing and we're all doing well. Anna is smiling and making cute baby girl noises now. She's sleeping better, too. She goes down for the night around 10pm and stays down until 2 or 3am and then gets up once more at 6 or 7am and goes down again for a few more hours. William is doing well, also, although he seems to have a cold right now and has had a hard time sleeping for a few nights in a row.

Meanwhile, we're still waiting on our Honda minivan. We decided soon after Anna came along that it would be super nice to have something other than a Nissan Sentra to put our two car seats into. We decided to take the plunge and go for a brand new Honda Odyssey. We chose Honda for the resale value and reliability and decided to go with new because of the warranty options. We even decided to get the leather interior and entertainment system because they'll just be nice to have, and if we're going for broke, we might as well go all the way. At first we requested a 2005. Our broker suggested waiting three weeks and getting an '06 because the warranty would be better and the price not much higher. I didn't mind waiting. But it didn't come three weeks later. The broker gave us a new date - Monday October 3rd (2 more weeks away). In honor of that date's arrival, my car broke down. I loaded William and Anna into Penny Monday morning prepared to spend the day playing at Rachel's and lunching with old coworkers and Penny wouldn't start. We've been forced to share Kip's car since then and it's been a challenge for me. For some reason, the car seats fit slightly better in the back seat of my '95 Sentra than in Kip's '94 Sentra, so driving Kip's with the kids in it is uncomfortable for me and miserable for Kip. Maybe this is just the universe's way of making us REALLY appreciate the minivan when we finally get it. Meanwhile, I've been having to get up and get everyone out the door to drive Kip to work if I want to do anything during the day, which I generally do (primary presidency meetings, dentist appointments, Anna's 2 month checkup). We haven't been very good about it and Kip's been getting to work a little on the late side. Tomorrow I'm letting him drive himself and we'll just be homebodies for a day. At least we can walk to Heidi's house if we need a break.

Kip had his coworker Chirayu help him tow Penny to the repair guy that fixed her last time. I feel sorry for the poor guy (Chirayu). Towing a Nissan Sentra with another Nissan Sentra down 5 miles of dark small-town streets is a little unnerving. This time at least Kip remembered to take along the walkie-talkies. Chirayu was able to tell him to keep it slow, but that did mean that the journey was a long one. I'm hoping to hear from the repair shop tomorrow that it's the same thing that happened before and that it can be fixed easily.

Here's the story of what happened before. A month before William was born I climbed into my car to head to work. Penny started and immediately died. She refused to start again. We had her towed to a nearby repair shop. They told us that her engine was shot and would have to be replaced for thousands of dollars (slightly more than she was worth even at that time) or that they would buy her off us for slightly less than that. We thought they sounded fishy, so we decided to get a second opinion. They charged us $100 for the towing and diagnostic and released her back to us.

I don't know how Kip chose this other repair place. It certainly wasn't by location. But the guy there suspected right away that what had happened was a rare, Sentra-only, oil-related problem. He gave me an oil change and did something I recall as soaking some parts of the engine in fresh oil and the car started just fine a day later. He counseled us to change the oil every 2 months instead of 3-whenever we got around to it. I was good about it for a year or so.

So, I'm hoping this is the same problem as before and that our little Penny can be revived and back on the road before the end of the week. Or, we could actually get the minivan we've been waiting for. But I think Penny getting repaired is more likely to happen first.