Wednesday's "Why Me?"

Wednesday was a wacky day. Tuesday, the babies napped like champs - 2 hours in the morning, 2 hours in the afternoon. Wednesday was roughly 1.5 in the late morning and that was it! So the zoo trip I had planned for 2:30 failed. We probably still could have gone, but they were being extra clingy and Trevy actually fell asleep around 2 and there's no way I'm waking any of my kids for optional activities!

So my plan of having 3 kids down while I made dinner for the Naones flew out the window. (The Naones are friends of ours who had a set of twins 3 weeks ago.) So I got all my ingredients chopped before I let the twins out of their cribs around 3, since they weren't napping anyway, and started putting things together. It took me a good two hours, but I'm happy to report that I did get the chicken caesar salad wraps put together and the Rice Krispies treats made, along with washing and destemming a bag of grapes. Add a bag of baby carrots and we're good to go!

I woke Trevlyn up around 4 so she would still go down that night. (Wouldn't that have been nice?) I fed the kids and packed the diaper bag so we'd be ready to go around 5. My plan was to have dinner to the Naones by 5:30. A little optimistic, seeing as James doesn't even get off work until 6:00 so I would have to take all three kids with me.

Miracle, I get everyone loaded in the car. Food in, present in, cake for Linnea in (their oldest turned 3 the day before), get the diaper bag and my purse and cell phone in, put myself in, put the key in, turn the key and...click, click, click. Are you kidding me?!

Of course, I tried a few times before admitting that the car was not going to start. So Trevy starts crying because she wants to go. (We'd been trying to get to the zoo for a few days, but it hadn't happened and we hadn't gone anywhere.) So I ran down and asked my neighbors if they wouldn't mind jumping the van. Bless Denise and Scott. Scott came and checked things out. Said he wasn't sure if it was just the battery or not, but that he wouldn't risk it, as it would most likely leave me stranded somewhere between here and where I was going.

So by then it was already 5:20 so I called Juliet to let her know where dinner was and she said that Ted was just leaving work and could come pick it up. They live on the other side of town, so I wasn't sure if that would be faster or if I should just wait for James to get home and run it over then. Call his cell phone you say?

Well, turns out that his phone had started dying 10 days before - the Sunday he left for his CE course in fact. He had 2 bars. By the time he got home, he was effectively down to one. We weren't sure if it was the phone or the charger, but it wasn't charging. I tried to find a new charger last Friday, but his phone is "old" (2 years!!!) so no one has that charger in stock. Highly convenient that James's mom was coming down Saturday for the twins birthday and her phone uses an identical charger. Great news! She even has a spare one! The bad news, it's not the charger. So we ordered his new phone Monday night and the bitter irony is that it arrived Wednesday morning.

The office stops taking phone calls after 4 so I had no way of finding out where James was and if he might be coming home early. So I finally called Juliet and told her that if Ted could swing by, that would be great.

After James got home, we jumped the car. It took a few tries before we got anything out of the van, but it did start, so we let is run a bit, disconnected everything and removed the battery. I then took it over to Auto Zone for an overnight recharge, figuring that Trevlyn had just left the lights on again. (She was in there Tuesday morning while I was vacuuming, but I was/am certain I checked all the switches to make sure that everything was off before I locked the van.)

At least they're still charging batteries for free. If only that was our simple solution...