Halloween

We went and saw grandma and aunties in Spooktacular this year.  Mason was dressed up as a cat in a costume his great uncle originally wore years ago. Very cute!

He loved his tail, and wasn't too terribly found of the hat.  Kept taking it off, but holding onto his tail.

He was pretty brave through most of the night, wandering off on weird paths and having to be snagged by aunties, some of whom were acting in the skits.

Aiden was a dragon, wearing a costume sent by Auntie Amber, that her daughter wore last year.  Very cute!  The tail was as long as he is tall!

Then we had trunk or treat the Friday before Halloween.

Here we have the princess and the dragon.

And these next pictures don't exactly fit with Halloween, but it was Mason's first attempt at dress-up games.  First he made me put my hoodie on him.  Then, when he got frustrated that the sleeves wouldn't stay up, I got creative with ponytail holders.  Then he brought me his belt.  Finished product?  Reminded me of a sith lord.

Evil Darth Sidious!

Such a cute boy!

Video!

Dreaming of our house

With us working on buying our first house, I've thinking a lot about how great it is going to be, and I've come up with a couple if lists:

Things I will not miss:
Cigarette smoke in the entryway and the smell seeping into our apartment
The neighbors taking all the parking (we'll have a garage!)
Hearing people thumping up and down the stairs on the other side of the wall while I'm trying to sleep
Hearing the upstairs neighbors little girl crying all hours of the night
Having Mike's office taking up half my living room
Plain white walls
The mailman who can't distinguish B from D
The extreme lack of space
Having our "storage" closet practically inaccessible
Having the changing table in the front room
The fridge here- half the shelf space in the doors is unusable since the bars are missing

Things I am looking forward to:
Having cats
Having a fenced backyard for Mason (and eventually Aiden) to play in
Being close (extremely!) to family
Having an office
Having closet space in our bedroom
The linen closet
Not having to use family's homes to store our stuff
Having a trunk- finally cleaning out all the stuff in it
Having a pantry
Having a big basement (ie. room to grow!) 
The permanency! No moving every year or so
Not having to depend on a potentially lazy landlord to handle problems
Being able to make changes in my house
Mike finally hanging all our pictures
The huge bathtub
Having space for people to visit us comfortably
New bookshelves to replace the ones that are being held together by duct tape and faith
Being able to organize better

Things I will miss:
My current ward
Having the washer and dryer in my kitchen- easy laundry!
The dumpster (the place we are moving has a maximum of two large garbage bags per week per household!  and I have two kids in diapers!  I'll have to get good at recycling)
The big playground type toys our  neighbors have out back
The close park
Having someone else responsible for repairs
The creek near our house
My life for the month or so it will take to get the house ready for us to move in
Having Wal-mart practically across the street
The cool little ledge that runs through the entire apartment

Making cookies!

Mike decided to make cookies on Sunday: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies!  Yum!  And Mason helped with most of it.  I was in the living room with the baby the whole time.  At one point I heard Mason start to cry, and Mike came running in laughing, looking for the camera.  Apparently, Mason had made a mess with the flour.

If you look close you can see his footprints in the flour.

Mason has become kind of finicky lately, he gets upset when he gets dirty, but only certain kinds of dirty.  He doesn't mind dirt, he likes to throw it on himself, but chunks of things, like mud, spaghetti sauce, that kind of thing?  Freaks him out until you clean him off.  I guess the flour qualified.

  And here is a video of the last part.  I helped put the cookies on the tray.

Next step. . .

Mike and I are looking into possibly buying a house now.  We NEED a bigger place, we are in a tiny (emphasis on tiny) two bedroom basement apartment and we are cramped.  Mike's office is now in the living room, making it much smaller, and with Mason's toys all over the place, things aren't fun.  Our bathroom is so small, I can't imagine how we'll fit a little potty in it when we try to potty train Mason, and his bedroom is basically a large closet.  The only nice thing is the kitchen is pretty large, and the rent is dirt cheap.  Oh, and I LOVE having my washer and dryer so easily accessible, having it downstairs is no fun, especially when I am pregnant.

Anyway, we've been talking about buying a house after Aiden is born for months, and now that he is born, we are looking into it more seriously.  And what appears to be the perfect house has fallen right in our laps.

My in-laws had a neighbor die in April, and his daughter is trying to get the house ready to sell.  It is about 50 years old with newer A/C, furnace, etc, and is in decent shape, but the interior desperately needs some paint and the hardwood floors need refinished.  Because of that, she is willing to sell it pretty cheaply- $35,000.  All the work that we can see that needs done is work that we can do by ourselves or with the help of family and friends.  We just need to get the house inspected to make sure that it is FHA worthy, since we have been pre-approved for a FHA loan.  And figure out how much insurance and utilities will amount too. But unless those cost A LOT more than I think they will, we will be paying less per month than we are now, and will have much more space.  It's three bedrooms, one and a half baths, with an unfinished basement.  Which means plenty of storage space AND room for growth.  And it has a fenced in back yard (oh for a place for Mason to run around!) a one-car garage, and a covered carport with a gate.  We are really excited about the possibilities here, and are hoping it works out.  I want to be in it by the end of the year if possible, although it needs a lot of painting and we would want to do all that first.  But it's possible!

I have been thinking a lot about a reaction I got to my post about having the baby, specifically about a comment I made about feeling like I wasn't up to natural childbirth.  I felt bad about it, I didn't want to make anyone feel like natural childbirth is the "only" way to give birth.  I personally feel it is the best option for me and my children, but everyone needs to make their own decisions.

Looking back, the main reason I was so upset about not being able to handle the pain was because of my previous delivery.  I was in labor with Mason for two days on the pitocin.  Granted, the first day I hardly felt a thing, but the second day, after they turned it back on, the contractions became very intense and I was in a lot of pain for 5 hours or longer.  The only way I kept going was because I was convinced that soon I would be dilated enough (5 centimeters) to get off the pitocin and labor naturally for the rest of my labor.  But when they checked me at the time that they hoped I'd be ready, I wasn't even close.  At that point, I decided to get an epidural for two reasons: 1) I couldn't handle the pain any longer with no apparent end in sight, and 2) my midwife warned me that if I didn't relax, nothing would continue, and I would likely end up getting a caesarean.  So I had good reason to believe that I could handle the pain of labor, especially because everyone tells me that pitocin contractions are worse than natural contractions.

So it is understandable that, after less than 2 hours of labor, when I began thinking I needed drugs, I started to wonder what had changed in the past 2 years to make me unable to handle the pain of such a short period of time.  And I was certain the pain would last several more hours, and that I couldn't  handle it for more than another half an hour or so.

I repeat, I feel that natural labor is the healthiest choice, and hoped I would be able to have a natural delivery, but I don't say everyone has to take that path.  Every woman has to make decisions about what is best for them and their child.

Mason's birthday celebrations

Mason turned two today!  I can't believe he is so big!

We took him to a restaurant on Thursday (which was Grandpa's birthday) and Grandpa, Grandma and aunties came too for a combined celebration.  We took him to a restaurant called Fritz's, which is cool because they deliver the food using little trains.  When we first got there, he was really cranky, because it was an hour past dinnertime, he was hungry, he wanted me to hold him.

 Then the first train came out.  We were in a really good place, we could see all the trains coming out to deliver food.  The first couple he saw didn't have any food for us, but he still liked them and was watching where they went.

We ordered a fruit cup for him as part of his kids meal, and for some reason they brought it separate.  Maybe it is a hot food, cold food thing.  Anyway, he was eating his fruit cup when the train brought our food.  You gotta love the look on his face!

Later, Grandma ordered some more food, because she had shown up a bit late.  I got a video of Mason's reaction.

We tried to take him to a free dinosaur exhibit later, but he freaked out.  He was scared to death of the room.  So instead we wandered outside for a little bit and then had ice cream.

 Hey there trouble!

 This morning we went to a picnic by the lake for breakfast and presents.  Here is Mommy putting on his shoes.

 The people at the picnic: all his local aunties and uncles!  We missed almost-Auntie Shawna though.

We started opening presents before food was ready.  He didn't end up eating much.

 First present: Cars 2 from Mommy and Daddy.  He wanted to open the DVD case too.

 Second present:

Third present:

Auntie April's present.  You can't see the second thing well, it's a spoon and fork with Cars characters on them, and wheels on them.  I don't think he'll be eating much with them.

He got really mad when Auntie Missa took off with them to cut them off the plastic ties, and Uncle Jeffrey brought him back.

He also got a really cool present from Grandma, Grandpa and Auntie Tiffany, which I will show in a minute here, after I tell a funny story.  Grandma had just poured herself a cup of chocolate milk, and when she went to put it down, she dropped it, and it virtually exploded.  All over Mason, who just happened to be sitting on the floor playing with his new cars right underfoot. 

He was MAD!  And I couldn't stop laughing.  I was trying to calm him down, but I couldn't stop laughing, which I think made things worse.  Eventually, his aunties carried him off to look at the lake, then Auntie April took him home and gave him a bath while Mommy and Daddy went to get the oil changed (it was WAY overdue).

 After lunch, while Mason was napping, Mommy and Daddy set up the cool present from Gma, Gpa and Tiffany.

Isn't it cool! They included some cars, a plane, a couple of boats for the lake, and little animals.  We laid it out in the living room and put the animals in the zoo, etc.  Mason loves it, he hasn't even asked to watch any movies all day!  I think it even made him forget about the new movies he got.

Here are a couple of pictures of him wearing the cape from Tutu.  He doesn't quite get it yet, but he likes it.

And here's happy boy playing with his new car toy.  Surprisingly, he already drives the cars mostly on the roads.  Him's so smart!

Mommy's day in the hospital

I had my regular prenatal appointment scheduled for 2:45 on Tuesday July 3rd, and directly afterwards I was supposed to go over to the hospital to finish pre-registration for the delivery of my baby.  I felt bad that it was going to go so long, since my visiting teacher was taking a turn driving me, but she said it was all fine.  Her teenage daughter came over with her to stay with Mason (who was napping) so we wouldn't have to deal with him.

The first issue was that when I got to the office, I had to fill out the insurance information for the office again, since it was the first of July, and apparently everyone has to fill everything out again in July.  I didn't know about it, so I was called back to my appointment late since they had to wait until the paperwork was done.

Then, when the midwife went to feel for the baby, she couldn't find his head down where it had been last week, and was pretty certain it was high up to the left.  She sent the nurse to ask the sonogram lady to make room for me so they could double check while she finished my regular check up.  That was the only thing that went quickly, she was ready for me as soon as my midwife was finished.

They did the ultrasound, and sure enough, the baby was transverse.  Transverse means the baby is lying sideways in the belly, and you can't really deliver a transverse baby naturally unless it turns during labor or beforehand.  They have a procedure they can do to turn the baby by manipulating the belly from the outside (called a version).  As part of the ultrasound they checked how much amniotic fluid I had to see if a version would be feasible, and apparently my fluid levels were really high, which explains how the baby turned in the first place.

So then I had to wait for the doctor who specializes in the version to come and check me out.  At this point I was late for my pre-registration appointment, so they called over to the hospital to let them know I'd be there later.  When the doctor finally showed up, he asked if we could do the version that same day, and when I said yes, they arranged for me to go do the pre-registration appointment first.  My midwife warned me that I could be at the hospital for up to three hours, so when I left the appointment and headed to the hospital with my visiting teacher, I told her what was up, and that I didn't expect her to wait around all that time.  We decided that she would leave me at the hospital, go get her daughter and Mason and take them home, and then we'd get Mason later.  I called Mike at work and told him what was going on, and we decided that we would play it by ear.

I went to the hospital and my visiting teacher hung around til the nurse showed up, then left.  That appointment went quickly, since I have delivered at that hospital before.  Then I was sent down to the cafeteria to eat something, since they had to do a fetal non-stress test first, which works much better if you've eaten, since it encourages the baby to move around.  It was about four thirty when I was done eating.  Then I sat for 30 minutes or so until they got me into the triage room for the test.  I had to wait about an hour for the doctor to show up, he had been in the middle of a delivery.  I called Mike to let him know I wouldn't be ready for him to pick me up on the way home from work, and arranged for him to go get Mason.

When the doctor came, they gave me a shot directly into my vein of a drug meant to relax my uterus so they could manipulate the baby into position.  It was the WEIRDEST feeling I have ever had!  It had an affect on me like a very strong stimulant.  My head was spinning, my heart rate was very accelerated and I was shaking, which lasted about an hour.  Once it took effect, it took the doctor about 30 seconds to move the baby into position.  He had a sonogram machine right there so he could make sure of the positioning.

When he was done, they plugged me back into the machine to make sure the baby hadn't been adversely affected by the procedure, and he decided I should get a Rhogam shot, just in case.  For some reason, the hospital has a policy that if they need to know your blood type for any procedure, they have to type your blood.  I don't understand why, it's on file in the midwives files, so why they can't just pull that, I can't understand.

Anyway, I had to wait for the nurse to come draw my blood for them to check the type.  When she finally showed up, I figured I could have Mike come get me, because they said the blood typing shouldn't take more than 30 minutes or so.  So I called him to come, but when he was there, we still hadn't heard from the lab, so I had to send him to my mother-in-laws house to wait, since it was close, and Mason wouldn't be allowed into the triage room.  Shortly after that, the lab sent up that there were some antibodies in my blood stream, and before I could get the Rhogam shot, they had to verify what the antibodies were.  I guess they were concerned that the antibodies could be the kind you get from having an adverse reaction to the baby's blood getting into your blood stream.

By the time they had figured out the antibodies and sent the order for the Rhogam, it was around 9.  I called Mike, and he was talking about how Mason was getting very tired.  We had no way of knowing how long it would take at this point, and Mike couldn't exactly drive him home to bed and then come get me.  Mike's dad offered to let him stay there, and when his mom got home, we decided to go with that, since the next day was the fourth of July and we'd be going over for a barbeque anyway.  So I told Mike to get Mason comfortable and come to the hospital.

He showed up a little after 9:30, and sat around waiting for me to be ready.  It took awhile for me to finally get the Rhogam shot because the pharmacy entered the information into the computer wrong, and the nurse needed to scan it before giving it to me.

The last straw for me was when the resident doctor came to check on me to release me.  He looked at the strip from the machine and saw that I had been having contractions the whole time I was there.  I hadn't felt them at all, and it isn't unusual to have contractions for a couple weeks before going into actual labor, but he seemed to think it was an issue, and that I should stay for another half an hour for observation.  I was NOT in favor of that, and the nurse supported me.  She told me that I could tell him no, that I was leaving, and that is what we did.  So as soon as she got the release paperwork, Mike and I left.  At around 10:30.  I had been in that stupid room for about 5 hours.

We didn't get home til after 11, and I got to bed very late.  I was grateful that Lorrie had suggested us leaving Mason there, because Mike and I both slept in this morning, him til about 9, me until 11.  Not continuous sleep for me, what with having to empty my bladder every few hours, and having a cold.  All I can say is, I'm glad that it's over, and I am going to do everything I can to encourage the baby to stay head down the way he is supposed to be.

Boys and girls

I was reading an article earlier today, and the author mentioned the belief that boys and girls are born exactly the same beyond physical differences: ie boys don't inherently prefer trucks and and toy guns and girls don't prefer dolls.  The author didn't buy it and neither do I.  If my little man is any indication, that is so not true.

When Mason was born, we got a lot of toys for him, toys of all kinds.  We got stuffed animals galore, rattles, two different blanket toys, etc.  When he was tiny, he liked the rattles and his Tigger-head blanket and Tigger stuffed animal.  As he got older, we put all the age appropriate toys on shelves that were easily accessible so he could choose his own toys.  It quickly became clear that the thing he absolutely adored was cars.

Any kind of toy car.  Toy trucks, cars, cars with the big balls in them, Hot Wheels cars, he just loves cars.  As I said, this isn't something we pushed on him, he picked it up on his own.  Up until recently cars were the only toys he really cared about.  He has recently regained an interest in stuffed animals to a point, but his favorites are the Tigger from when he was tiny, and a Buzz Lightyear that his aunties bought him a couple of weeks ago.  The main thing he does with them is sleep with them.  He carries them around a bit from time to time, but he mainly just sleeps with them.  And I've been working on getting him interested in the little toy animals he has, trying to teach him the names of the animals and the sounds they make.  But his main love is cars.

Of course he's still young, so anything with wheels counts.  When we visit his friend, he is more likely to play with her doll's stroller than the doll itself.  And I have a little Cabbage Patch doll I borrowed from my mother-in-law that I am using to try to teach him to be gentle with babies.  He finds the doll fascinating and loves to hold it, and stroke it's head, and occasionally kiss it, but his interest lasts about 2 minutes, then he gives it back to be put in the crib, and runs off to his cars again.  He doesn't care about toy guns yet though, not really, which I am fine with.  My grandma has some water guns, and he likes them because they are brightly colored, but has no idea what to do with them.  Though that may be because he is an only, so far, and we don't watch a lot of cartoons with violence in them.

Also, he could care less about his clothes.  I have to hold him down to get him dressed, whereas I have it on good authority from the moms of two little girls his same age that their daughters are clothes horses already.  They love their clothes and their shoes.  Mason only cares about shoes because he can't go outside without them, so he will run and get them when I tell him, knowing that means he gets to go outside.

So boys and girls born alike?  I don't believe it.  Equal, yes, but not liking the same things.  I am sure that there are exceptions, we've all heard of tomboys, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule.

6 am

It is 6 in the morning and I can't sleep.

We went to the garden Friday night for a serious weeding session which was WAY overdue, and I realized too late, that the only way I could really weed was to sit down.  In the grass. In Missouri.  I hadn't brought a blanket or anything to sit on, so I didn't have a buffer, and bending over isn't a very feasible option with this giant baby belly of mine.  So I did it and now I am reaping the consequences.  Next time I'll let Mike do all the work, he got a lot more done than I did anyway.

I now have 16-20 bug bites spread over my belly, another 16-20 on my legs, and one (so far) on my arm.  New ones keep appearing, so the tally may rise.  You can guess how conducive this is to sleep.  I've tried the anti-itch gel we have, both alone and with Band-aides over it to try to keep them from getting itched by my clothes, but it doesn't seem to be helping.  Clear nail polish helped me last time I got bug bites, but I had to borrow that from my neighbor and I haven't gotten around to buying any yet.  And I didn't think that waking her up in the middle of the night would be good for neighbor relations.

On a side note, does anyone else have trouble breathing through their nose when they are great with child?  I keep waking up with my mouth bone dry, because I can't seem to breath properly with my mouth shut right now.

I've had about 2 hours of sleep and kind of doubt I'll get much more.  Mason will be up before 8, if he sticks to his normal routine, then we have church at 9.  I'm glad I got in a decent nap today (technically yesterday).  And since it is Sunday, I tend to take naps anyway, so hopefully the itching will have gone down by then.

Oh, random thought, this is my 100th blog post.  Yay me!

Almost a year later . . .

Almost a year ago, I quit my job.  My last day of work was May 6th.  I haven't regretted that choice at all.  Mason has been so much happier with me at home, he has grown a lot, and become less clingy.  And I have been happier being at home with him.  Being a stay-at-home mom isn't easy, but my stress level dropped significantly because I hated having to leave my child with others to care for him.

There have been setbacks.  I tried to set up daycare, but never managed to make it work, so I wasn't able to contribute much to our income.  And we have built up a little bit of credit card debt, because I stopped paying it off each month.  I decided it would be better to have the available cash, rather than worry about a little bit of interest.

Mike finished his degree in December, and we started job hunting the end of November or the beginning of December.  I had been a little spoiled by my experience getting my job, because it had seemed like such a sure thing, and I was in a better situation, financially (I was living with my Dad temporarily, and and was single, much easier to deal with.)  But we had applied for so many jobs for Mike and hadn't even heard from half of them.

On a side note, government jobs are annoying to apply for, because you don't hear anything once the application process is complete unless they decide to hire you.

Anyway, back when I quit, we had managed to save enough money to pay for our expenses for 8 months or so.  We started running low at the beginning of the year, which was about when I stopped paying off the credit card each month (which we mainly used for gas, but since Mike had an hour drive to and from school everyday, that added up).  Then, of course, we could file our taxes, and we did so as soon as possible, expecting to get a good sized tax return, which, thankfully, we did.  I had worked long enough, and with child tax credits and everything, we got enough to pay for several more months.

The whole time we had Mike's part time job, and the income from that, which wasn't much, but helped to extend the money some.  But we were starting to get worried.  We'd been job hunting for at least four months, and hadn't even gotten any nibbles.  We extended the search to part time jobs, figuring that he could keep the one he had, and having two might get us enough income, as well as getting a foot in the door for future full-time possibilities.  It wouldn't have been ideal, but it would have been better than what we had.

Still nothing.  We were running low on savings. We still had enough for a couple months at least, but we decided that if we didn't find something by the beginning of May, we'd have to go to the church to get some help to extend our savings a bit longer.

Then it happened.  It was kind of interesting how it worked out.  A guy in our ward had known about  job openings at his work, and had helped another guy get hired there.  The only reason Mike hadn't heard about the job opening was because he had never talked to our ward employment specialist about needing work.  He had been working with the stake employment specialist, but it hadn't occurred to him that he should talk to both.  Anyway, I had heard from someone about the job openings, but by the time Mike spoke to the guy who worked there, all the openings had been filled.  But he said to go ahead and fill out an application online anyway for future openings.

A couple weeks later, a friend of mine in the ward mentioned to me, that she'd been told by the new hire at this company, that they were looking for more people again.  This was a Thursday or Friday. I passed the info on to Mike, and he applied for the job Saturday.

The next Tuesday they called him for an interview on Wednesday.

Thursday, they called and offered him a job.

And he starts work next week, two weeks after being called for the interview.

It's a full time job, that pays more than we need to survive, so we can save up for, hopefully, a down payment on a house, and other things.  It has benefits for employees and their families, which seem to be fairly competitive.  And it starts the first of May.  Mike finds it very interesting that the job starts on the day that we set for our cut-off of going to the church for aid.  All I can say, is that the Lord has been watching over us.

Not only that, but we have almost enough in savings to pay off our credit card when we get the first paycheck.  It all worked out just right.

When I quit my job, it was a gamble.  I had a good, secure job, with good benefits, and opportunities to advance, whereas Mike was still a college student.  My co-workers thought I was nuts, and I can't blame them: by the world's view, I was.  But I've always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, and when Mason was born, that desire was intensified.  And Mike and I both felt that Heavenly Father wanted me to be home with our son, no matter what sacrifice was involved.  So we took what steps we could to ensure that we wouldn't be a financial burden on anyone, and took the leap.  And the net has finally appeared.

Again, can't we go back to horses?

When Mike got into the car on Saturday to go to work, it freaked out on him.  First it didn't want to start and then when he finally got it going, he couldn't get any power from it and it began jerking around like crazy.  He brought it back home and got a ride to work from our home teacher, and we called his dad to come out and test the battery for us, hoping that was the problem.  Unfortunately, it wasn't.  My father-in-law played with the car a bit, and said he thought it was the fuel, either the filter, water in the fuel, or possibly the pump (ouch!).

We drove the car to Jiffy Lube, which is just around the corner, to test the fuel filter possibility.  We were told that our car doesn't have an external fuel filter, that if it was the fuel pump that the car wouldn't work at all, and that they thought it was a clogged catalytic converter.  They also warned us that if we kept driving it, we could damage it more.  So we brought it back home and parked it, and borrowed Mike's sister's car to go to church the next day.

This morning we called the tow company that our insurance pays for ($7 a year, and sooooo worth it!) and had them tow our car to the car repair place we use.  It was kinda cool how everything worked.  The tow company told us it would take 45 minutes to get here (10 minutes), the car place told us first that they might not be able to finish our car today, and then, after they diagnosed the problem, they told us the repairs would take a couple of hours and it was done in less an hour. Nice!

The bad thing is that the problem was more serious than we thought.  Our car is a four cylinder, and it was running on two.  Something to do with bad coil towers.  It cost $533 to fix.  Ouch!

Well, at least we got our car back quickly.

Let's go back to riding horses

Friday morning I ended up driving my husband to work because a friend of mine wanted to have lunch with me that day, and I needed the car.  I had grabbed some things in preparation for running errands, figuring it would be easiest if I didn't go home before lunch so my little boy would stay awake, and not get bored, since he usually takes a nap around the time I planned to be at dinner.  On the way to his work, I noticed that our car was seriously overdue for an oil change, and figured I'd take the car to Jiffy Lube as part of my errands, since I knew it would be hard to find another time to get the car in.

But I had forgotten one important thing.  It was Veteran's Day.  So Jiffy Lube was PACKED.

They told me it would be a forty minute wait, which I figured would be fine.  I grabbed one of the library books I was planning to return for some reading material, and a couple of cars for Mason to play with, and we went in.  Unfortunately, the car in front of mine, had some issues, and my car didn't get in for an hour.

Then they told me that I had a leak in my transmission.

My last car died because of a leaky transmission, so I wasn't happy to hear this.  They said it could be fixed by dropping the pan, whatever that meant and gave me a quote.  I decided not to do it then for two reasons: first, I figured I could get it done cheaper at our regular car place, and second, I didn't have time, since my lunch was supposed to be about an hour later at that point.  So I had them change the oil and left.  An hour and a half gone.

On my way to the library, I called our regular car place to ask what it would cost for what I needed and was surprised to find out it would cost as much as or maybe even more than Jiffy Lube for what I needed.  Apparently one of the main costs is the transmission fluid.  Plus, I wouldn't be able to get the car in that day, and I wanted to get it repaired quickly, since my husband drives the car almost 2 hours Monday through Thursday.  In fact, I wasn't sure I'd be able to get it done in the next month.  So I decided to take the car back to Jiffy Lube after lunch and Mason's nap.

I went to the library and dropped off the library books, then got Mason back in the car to go to Wal-Mart. I needed lightbulbs to replace the front blinkers.  But the the car freaked out on me.

Back when I was pregnant with Mason about a year and a half ago, our car started acting up (as I wrote about here.)  We never managed to get it fixed, because whenever we took it to the shop, it was working fine, and they couldn't figure out what the issue was.  Mike figured out that the best way to handle it is to disconnect and reconnect the battery while trying to start the car.  It works, but it takes more than one try usually.

Basically what happens is the car is stuck in park.  This happens periodically and seems to be more frequent recently, but it usually happens when Mike is driving; this is the first time it has happened when I was alone.  So I spent 45 minutes messing with the battery before it finally got fixed.  I had to let Mason out of his car seat about 15 minutes into it, because he HATES being in his car seat if we aren't moving.  And the worst part is, that I called a friend to come help me (it's much easier with two people, and she had room in her car for us if we couldn't get it going) and the first time I tried it when she got there it worked.  Stupid car.

I was late picking up my friend for lunch, but thankfully she was working overtime, so it didn't matter how long of a lunch she took.  Then I took Mason home and he took a nice long nap.  When he woke up, I got smart and called Jiffy Lube to see if they were still busy.  The manager remembered me, and told me that yeah, they were busy, but to try back at four.  When I called back, they were mostly caught up, so I headed on over.

They got to my car quickly, but it took over an hour for the repair.  I had them flush the transmission as well, because it needed to be done anyway and only cost an extra 20 bucks.  They gave me a discount too.  But it was another hour and a half.  I spent 3 hours at Jiffy Lube.

I guess I shouldn't really complain, because if I hadn't taken the car for the oil change, and hadn't caught the transmission leak, we may have killed the car, especially since Mike drives it so much.  I just hate car problems, and I don't like having to pay lots of money on my car when we are poor.  Sometimes I think cars are more trouble than they are worth, and wish we could just go back to riding horses.

Whatever Happened to Dr. Blythe?

Does anyone else love to read L.M. Montgomery?  My all-time favorite is The Blue Castle, but I also like to read Anne of Green Gables and the sequels.  The other day, I was reading one of the later books, Rainbow Valley, I think, and I was struck by Anne's husband, Dr. Blythe.  If you remember, he was a very highly respected doctor, he had a successful practice, everyone loved him, and he was always going out.  And he didn't work at a hospital or office, he made house calls.

Whatever happened to that?  Whatever happened to doctors being on call all the time and knowing his patients and their families?  Whatever happened to doctors being affordable?  Dr. Blythe made a good living, but he also took care of everyone, and people managed to pay him without taking loans out on their souls.  Of course, Dr. Blythe lived in a small town, but surely there would be enough patients in a small part of town to support family doctors in a similar practice.  And hey, whatever happened to women routinely giving birth at home?

But really, I guess it's almost obvious what happened.  The culture changes, laws changed, and things got to expensive.  So many doctors have hundreds of thousands in student loans by the time they finish school, so they have to charge a lot of money.  Also, malpractice insurance is out the wazoo.  A roommate of mine once talked about how her dad, who was an OB/GYN, had to take out tons of malpractice insurance to protect himself, because people sue the doctor if there is anything wrong with the baby, even if it wasn't the doctors fault.  That probably also explains why doctors work from hospitals, for the sterile environment.  And I'm sure the need for malpractice insurance isn't limited to doctors who deliver babies.  We are much to prone to sue people for things that go wrong.  Sometimes, yes, the doctor was at fault, and should be held accountable.  But sometimes, things happen and no one is to blame, but people want to blame someone. 

Anyway, I guess this is a "good old days" post, wishing for what won't be again.  Either way, I am glad my husband isn't studying to be a doctor.  They may make good money, but it takes years to become a doctor (and I am tired of him being in school), and, whether they are Dr. Blythe or a hospital doctor from our time, they are way to busy for my liking.