It's been a long week! Seems it's time for our annual car problems, as usual hitting just before company bonus time (month end), when the money's tight. Monday afternoon at 12:30 The Momma had to attend C's IEP meeting... Individual Education Plan for special needs students. IEPs are developed at least once a year for special needs students and usually involve many harrowing meetings and much negotiating. Fortunately The Momma, while prone to severe anxiety over these meetings, is a Harvard Law School grad and has a very good success rate at having these things go in a direction that suits us!
C has issues stemming primarily from Sensory Integration Dysfunction (SID), a neurological disorder where his brain doesn't interpret sensory input "normally", whatever "normal" is. He has also tested as borderline autistic in some areas, though there's no diagnosis there. The primary problem C has from this is serious eating problems, as he finds most food textures and strong flavors "scary" or threatening, and he also has a very low appetite. As a result he likes very few things and doesn't eat a lot of what he likes, so his weight is at the bottom or even off the low end of the chart.
Anyway, The Momma had to be at the school at 12:30 Monday; I had to be at the doctor's office for a check-up at 1:00. Alas, when she tried to leave she found her van wouldn't start... dead battery, and no time to deal with it. So I dropped her at the school on my way to the doc's and met her back there afterwards. We had a quick bite to eat then picked C up after school and returned home. We were hoping to jumpstart the van, but unfortunately it was parked nose in in the driveway, and I couldn't maneuver my Saab and the van close enough for the hook-up as the grass all around the narrow drive was snowed over. When there's snow on the ground we park both vehicles in the driveway, when there's no snow I park the Saab in a second "driveway", a cutout in the grass at the other end of the yard with just a little paved lip onto the street.
Being already late for work The Momma pulled out her AAA card for help with the van, and I left for the office. I checked in later and they'd successfully started the van and let it run for a bit without issue.
Monday night I got home from work, but got a call from work around 2:30am as I was getting ready for bed (I usually work 2pm-Midnight). Not something that tied me up for long but it woke me up a bit again and it was close to 4 before I got to sleep; I set my alarm a bit later than usual (for 11:30a). At 8am though C woke me up (with a very sweet cuddle, at least!), with more bad news... as my car is parked closer to the street when both are in the driveway they'd taken it to bring C to school, but less than half a mile up the main street (Main Street, in fact) The Momma pulled over and parked on the side... it was making a nasty whining noise and she was smelling something burning.
They walked back to the house and got in the van... it again wouldn't start. (Though at least it was parked nose-out now after the previous day's misadventure!) So they gave up and woke me up.
I walked up to the car and saw no immediate problems (fluids good, no obvious fraying of belts from what I could see), so I drove it back to the house. I could hear the whining sound, and though it wasn't bad I could smell the burning smell when I had the hood open. So we used the Saab to jumpstart the van again, then swapped the cars around. This time I finally found that the dome light switch on the van had been left on, and as this is a full-size conversion van there's several interior lights that run on that circuit so at least we didn't have a real problem there. The Saab was a bit more worrisome, and I made an appointment for this morning (Thursday) as that was the first available at our local garage, deciding not to drive it until we could have it checked. I drove the van to work Tuesday and Wednesday, which worked out okay for us as C never got to school Tuesday, and had an early, 12:30pm release on Wednesday.
So today, after again working until midnight last night, I was up around 7:15am to bring the Saab up to the garage. I needed to know by 1pm or so if the car was drivable; I knew I likely couldn't afford any major repairs until the end of the month though. It was 2pm before they were able to tell me, no, it ain't drivable... and though I can't afford the repairs until month end at least the damage won't be too terrible (as such things go)... a bit under $300 to replace the fan belt and the idle pulleys that drive it, which were "disintegrating". Except for the bad fiscal timing the news wasn't bad, but it will leave us on one car for the next two weeks.
Thursday though is the one day I can't take the van to work, as C has his feeding therapist appointments on Thursday late afternoons each week and it's usually 7pm before they're home from these. So no work today; I drove the car back home until payday, then hopped in the van with the family to at least take advantage of the opportunity to meet C's therapist, Carol, about whom The Momma has had Many Great Things to say! The visit was mostly a play opportunity for C in their therapy room, as we have an appointment in two weeks with a new specialist and we're mostly discussing treatment strategies until we find out where that leaves. So C was able to play on the gym stuff while The Momma and Carol conferred. I snapped a few photos with the camera phone while there, click here (on the thumbnail photo at the top of this post) to see a few larger images from the session. (Hmmm, a "camera phone"... that simple SF gadget seems like it warrants its own blog post!)
We left there around 5:30, did a bit of shopping, stopped for C & The Momma's traditional post-therapy dinner and playtime at McDonald's, then got back here around 7:15.
Long day! But I'm off tomorrow at least, apart from picking up a friend's son from school in the afternoon, and it'll be hopefully a fairly peaceful weekend. Have to get C's homework done early so we can kick back and watch the Patriots Sunday in their playoff game!
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