Car People

For those of you who have perused our blog before, you may recall a past "run-in" we endured with our motor vehicles back in August. Then about, oh, a month later, someone [cough-cough-Kraemer-cough :)] ran my car up against an [admittedly oddly shaped] curb, ripping down a piece of who knows what from its bottom. Not all the way off, mind you, but just enough that it drug on the ground. (To be fair, this wasn't me only because Kraemer is always nice enough to be the one behind the wheel, since I'm generally pumping. Yes, in the car, it's nuts.) Kraemer thought he had it fixed, and yet one evening, when Kraemer was out to dinner with a friend visiting DC and I was heading to the hospital alone, I heard a curiously familiar noise. Could that be a dragging piece of plastic-who-knows-what? It could. I drove right back home, where I made good time and beautiful car art with some duct tape. (Habitaters, the miracle of duct tape, right?)

always in this darn seat,
and my mom never fixes my hat!

Sidebar: Kraemer and I write many of these entries in tandem. We try to use the appropriate names and pronouns, but sometimes you probably think Taryn is narrating and two paragraphs later you could swear you're vibing on Kraemer's tone. That's probably because you are. Sorry about that. :)

If you haven't picked it up yet, we are not car people. That might sound a bit odd coming from a family with two cars, but tons of people in DC don't even own A car much less two. (You could say we only still own ours because, well, run, they do, but resale value wouldn't amount to much.) The fact that we only drive to go to Calder's doctors appointments means that we haven't been using our cars on a regular basis for years now, and that lack of use takes its toll.

Calder sees a plethora of doctors on a regular basis, one of them being the ophthalmologist. We packed him up and ran out across the river to Falls Church to see how his ROP had progressed/regressed. With flu season in full swing the plan was for me to wait in the car with Calder while Taryn ran up, checked us in, and then she'd text when the doctor was ready to take us back. Taryn dialed down five minutes later to inform me that the doctor had had surgery last week and her office had failed to call us to cancel the appointment. (Taryn also very nearly had some words with the gentleman who told her she couldn't use her cell phone ... to call her husband to tell him about the change in plans, a result of their mistake.) Needless to say we were perturbed that we would have to recreate the trek the next day.

capturing the smile

Take two. We arrived at 12:15 for our 12:30 appointment, scheduled during lunchtime so the waiting room would be clear. Calder blew out his diaper in the interim but the staff kept insisting that the doctor was right around the corner so we held off changing him. Taryn went out to the car to pump while I waited. Roughly 30 minutes later the doctor got to examine a very stinky, very pissed off Calder, not that using Clockwork-Orange-type clips to keep Calder's eyes open would leave him very calm anyway. Calder's eyes were about the same, with no deterioration and ROP still in one eye at Stage 1.

And that's when Taryn called up with the news that the car battery was dead.

I ran out to the car to get it turned on and warmed up (it was frigid and had snowed the day before). Only a parking lot away from Sears, I headed over to grab a set of jumper cables. Unfortunately, the Christmas spirit was not infusing other people in the parking lot as none of the four people I asked were willing to lend a hand to jump a car. Eventually I resorted to calling AAA; they were super fast in showing up, jumped the car and evaluated the battery, noting that there was very little life left. Within an hour we were back on the road and heading for the holidays.

Don't worry, we take the train to work!