Month: August 2014

Looks like we made it, the Eagle has landed, halas, finito, The End, and a million other ways of saying: Josh is home! 

Calvin has been working all summer at a paid internship on base. The program places students in a variety of jobs: food service, maintenance, the gym, movie theater, marketing department, child care, etc. Calvin has been working with the school age care program and it has been a perfect match for his gifts. This summer the base brought in a group of college age students with the Camp Adventure program from the US to run summer camps for the kids. Calvin has loved working alongside of them, singing songs, getting whipped cream pies in the face every Thursday, playing with the kids, and assisting with field trips.

The other part of his internship was a long-term project where all of the teen employees were responsible for collaborating on a Day for Kids. They had to plan the event, book the location and gear required, figure out food, promote the event to the base community, etc. Calvin was nervous it wasn’t going to all come together at the end (What if the people in charge of the food made a mistake in the ordering? Did the right date and time get printed on the flyers?), but we had a great day.

The gym was set up with carnival games, a gaga ball ring (a game similar to dodge ball, but played on the fly with the palm of the hand and the added strategy of using the curved wall to direct the ball), bouncy structures, face painting, prizes and food.

Thursday was a downer, Friday was full of warm fuzzies (that I will write about later), but yesterday things blew up. Literally, my engine blew up. Or just blew. Which sucks. I was hoping it was a belt or some other non-complicated part that could be replaced to get my Montero back on the road, but in the back of my mind I knew the odds were against me. I’ve never heard a car make that kind of horrible grinding noise before. So I wasn’t surprised when the mechanic called and said, “Madame, your engine is gone. Seized. Turn it on and it goes BAP BAP BAP BAP! No good. No oil. Bone dry.”

Oh yeah. Oil. Is that something I was supposed be checking? I can’t do it all, people. Hey, if it’s not leaking and there’s no warning lights I assume all is good. Except it turns out this model car doesn’t have an oil warning light. Thanks Mitsubishi. That’s a stellar design feature. I think even my 1975 VW Bug had an oil warning light. I thought cars were supposed to get more sophisticated, not less. If the car can warm my buns with its heated leather seats, you’d think there’d be a little red light to let me know when its life blood is in danger of running out. Minor details.

Josh, God bless him, said there’s no guarantee that if he were home it wouldn’t have happened anyway, but I have more faith in him than that. He would have checked it. Thanks Sunni extremists. You owe me a car. Send the bill to Mitsubishi and ask them to split the cost with you.

So I was down to .5 cars because if you read the previous post you saw my text to Josh that not a single rear light in our “new” car was working (the one we ironically bought for Josh right before he left so he wouldn’t have to bike to work everyday in the heat). None of the brake lights and not the running lights — except those worked, but in reverse. They’re on in the daytime, but when I turn the headlights on they switch off. It took about 5 minutes with the kids yelling, “on! off! off! still off! on!” before I figured out exactly what was happening back there. The best part is the car passed inspection last week. What sort of inspection are they doing when a car with no brake lights passes?

Since I want to get the borrowed car back to my friend as soon as possible (part of the warm fuzzies story), my only option now was to get the lights fixed on the mini Rover (Land Rover Freelander) as soon as possible. So I did the grownup thing and called the mechanic back and made arrangements to drop it off this morning at his garage. It’s close enough that I would be able to walk home (a sweaty, dripping mess) which made things a little less complicated. I go out and start the car: click, click, click. WHAT?! Again: click, click, click. A dead battery. The gifts just keep on coming my way. Batteries do die overnight here, but it always seems to happen to me. I just jumped through these same hoops with the dearly departed Montero back in May. This is my third battery replacement in 18 months and Josh has been gone every time. Argggh.

I called the mechanic back and sheepishly admitted that my half-broke car was now fully broke and he offered to bring a battery to my house. I just had to open the hood and get the part number so he could bring the right sized replacement. So I spent the next 5 minutes trying to locate the hood latch. Seriously. I don’t know which flunky design school the Freelander team graduated from, but it ended up being tucked up under the dash on the passenger side. I was feeling my way all over the dash of the car — hitting all the buttons, digging under my seat, even looking on the grill of the car for a magic button to push . . . nothing. When I had finally given up I leaned over to pick up my bag off the floor on the passenger side and there it was, right in my face.

I finally got the hood opened, figured out which size battery the car takes (some little numbers and letters written on the side) and called George (my mechanic) back. He came out with a guy, installed the new battery and then whisked my car away, promising to work on it today and have it back to me sometime tomorrow. Inshallah. I should probably just stay home until Josh is back in the country since everything I touch seems to fall apart.

On a unrelated note — the boys went back to school today. One last year with them in High School, Middle School and Elementary School. Summer was way too short, but if that’s what it takes for Josh to get home, then let’s hurry up!

I have a story to write, but I’m not sure which angle to approach it from. Usually my life events are pretty straightforward — Camille does something funny, a repairman can’t understand me, or one of the boys has an accomplishment that I feel like bragging about. Easy blogging.

I’ll start by saying that Josh was going to come home last night. I only had that date on the calendar for 24 hours before it was bumped to later, but it was long enough to make mental plans for a weekend together before the boys go back to school. Long enough to be disappointed, even though I promised myself I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Been there, done that, push repeat.

So I was given a second date — that one got bumped too. And then a third, and now I have a 4th or possibly a 5th, but at this point I’m like, “Why bother!?” Hoping he comes home someday . . .

I share that part of it to say that yesterday I was already working on borrowed time. I was going through the motions thinking, “Well, Josh should have been in the air by now and I could have been getting ready to pick him up at the airport.” I had been given the finish line and had completed my marathon. I was not supposed to have to run to Mile 26.3 (or .4 or .5 or beyond).

In spite of that, we were having a good day. At least I could say, “I was right,” about my cynicism at him actually returning on the earliest possible date. Small joys. We had a family work party to attend that evening since we have had so many new people join the unit this summer that I haven’t met yet. Calvin had finished his last day of work and we had several end of summer parties this weekend to kick off the new school year. At least I wouldn’t be sitting around annoyed that Josh wasn’t back yet.

I picked up the boys from base (Carter has been going to the teen center during Calvin’s work hours since he’s finally old enough) and we headed to the other side of the island to join the BBQ that was already underway. We were speeding along and the boys were taking turns soloing to parts of the Pitch Perfect soundtrack when my car suddenly bucked back and forth with a loud THUNK! and started shaking like it was going to fall apart. I was in the fast lane and my speed was dropping and it was rush hour, but miracle of miracles I had 5 lanes of traffic to cross to get over and they were all open. I feel like I take my life in my hands regularly when I try to merge at this particular spot where two freeways join and then separate and everyone is quickly criss-crossing to get all the way over both ways, but on this day? It has never been so clear.

Since there’s no shoulder on this stretch of road I had to go up the overpass to get off at the closest exit and I kept hoping and praying that the car would keep going until I could get somewhere where I could pull over. I came thundering down the offramp and there was still nowhere to go except straight, but traffic was backed up and stopped at a traffic light. The car was sputtering and jittering and I had it in neutral but my foot lightly on the gas enough to keep the RPMs up . . . and then my car started smoking. A Bahraini man came running up through the lines of traffic waving a fire extinguisher so I quickly turned off the car and we abandoned ship. Camille was asleep in her carseat and the boys freed and pulled her out with lightning speed. Once out of the car I could see there weren’t flames, just smoke from what I assume is a broken belt or something so I crossed my fingers that the car would start up again and I was able to drive it up and over the curb and onto a patch of dirt before it died.

We pulled our stuff out of the car, locked it up and started walking home. The other miracle (or the 7th, 10th, or 14th, depending on how you want to count them) is that my car broke right before the exit that was closest to my house when it easily could have happened anywhere along width of the island. I could have called someone to pick us up and give us a ride, but I didn’t have to since we were only about a mile from home.