we interrupt this rant to bring you...

a different rant!

you know how sometimes you have your day all set up & then something stupid happens that causes it to all come crashing down around your ears? well, that was my evening.

middlest had basketball practice tonight. the original plan is for middlest & biggest to walk/ride the bus to practice - thus not forcing me to drive all over God's green earth 4 times a week (we've finally discovered the joys of having children on two different teams in the same sport. with practices on opposite days. but games on the same day. argh.) but today it was raining. and i needed to grocery shop. and hit the library. so basically, if anyone is counting, i needed to be in three places at once...cooking dinner, grocery shopping & taking middlest to the gym. oh, yes, and then later was supposed to be at a basketball meeting

1 volunteered to take middlest to the gym so that i only had to be in two places at once. and that was just fine b/c what mama isn't used to being in two places at one time? and that's when it all came crashing down. it started with this phone call. "uh, you're going to have to cancel or reschedule grocery shopping. (not so easy when there is NO FOOD IN THE HOUSE since we spent the weekend in 1-seoul or 2-traffic) my car overheated & i don't think i should drive it." see, i could take the baby to the grocery store. but i learned a couple of months ago that with a littlest like i have - houdini-esque you could say - you don't take her to the grocery store unless you have back-up. which doesn't work very well, either, as the back-up is very good at asking for everything. which means that i usually end up spending about two times as much on groceries as i normally do. so back-up is really better known as fill-up (the cart, that is). so i don't take littlest to the grocery store if i can help it. so we still have no groceries.

because shortly after the overheating phone call, i got another phone call. and this time 1 & his hot-rod were broken down, of all places, directly in front of the front gate. and he was begging for antifreeze. oh for pete's sake. at least littlest had clothes on. hair wasn't combed but at least she had clothes. race over to post, locate the antifreeze, bite the head off the guy in the gas station who was kind enough to offer to help even after having his head bitten off (yes, i apologized), drove back around post with said antifreeze, car starts. thank goodness. break the traffic rules getting out of the gate to journey down the street so the mechanic who should know us by name & have us on his christmas card list at this point can look at the hot rod & tell us that the water pump has gone out.

so we're back to being a one car family. and i've decided that, but for the exchange rate, the car is, by all rights, totalled by now. as we've spent as much, in won, on it as we spent, in dollars, to purchase it. the next thing that goes out on that bugger, the bugger itself goes. 1 loves his hot rod but, dangit, i refuse to spend anything else on it. forget it. not gonna happen.

so let's recap.
groceries gotten? nope
library trip? nope again
dinner cooked? actually, yes, but then had to be reheated & just wasn't the same
basketball meeting attended? yes, again. by the whole collette/coaxum family. that was ridiculous.

it's christmas time. i don't want to spend money on a gosh-darn car. blah. a radiator, window motor, window regulator, door lock & water pump later, let's pray this is the end of it. if not, i have a sneaking suspicion that hot rod is gonna find himself in the han river. if you see it on the news, forget you know me.