Murphy's Law

Is alive and well. Remember what I said about the puke carseat cover? Well, here's the 411, since I know you all are DYING to hear the adventures of the Barf-O-Matic 3000 (aka The Younger Princess Ella).

Since today wasn't the 1st Saturday of the Month (aka Jason-is-teaching-Kickboxing-class-today-day) and it isn't May yet (aka I-teach-ballroom-dancing-at-our-local-YMCA-on-Saturdays-starting-in-May), we decided to make a day of it and have Dim Sum down in our local Chinatown. One thing we can always count on is that the kids eat GOOD at Dim Sum. So many choices and everyone gets their favorites. After Dim Sum, I wanted Boba from our local Lollicup store. The Younger Princess Ella decided to share with me since no one else wanted any (a rare occurrence). So I procured a large Thai Milk Tea with Boba and brought it back to the car.

Earlier in the week, I'd had business in that part of town and meant to stop by this store. So, I convinced my husband to pull in and let me run in to see if I could jog my memory as to what I needed there. That proved to be an exercise in futility and so I returned to the car in under 5 minutes. In that short amount of time, The Younger Princess Ella had polished off about 2/3 of the Boba and was looking rather green. I barely had time to utter the words "You aren't going to throw up are you?" before, you guessed it, a flood of regurgitate Boba drink and Dim Sum spewed forth. So we pulled around the block, parked the car, de-pukified the back seat, the child, the carseat and ME and we went on our merry way. We're pros at this since she's done it before after Dim Sum and Boba.

Now you might think that this would be the end of our troubles... We were tooling down the highway in the left lane, kids are resting and I'm reading the autobiography of Apolo Anton Ohno (now available at my local Dollar Tree for a whopping buck) when all of the sudden...

That's right...

CAR TROUBLE! The car jerks like the tranny is slipping and the engine light comes on and bells start to ding. We get off the highway and onto the shoulder and turn the car off thinking that it's the oil thingy. I recently had an oil change at the local Mobil place (not a happy camper about that trip) and so we thought maybe we might be spilling oil. Tried to restart the car and NOTHING. Nada. Husband checks under the hood and wouldn't you know it... The timing belt broke (or so we think). Either way, the car is not driveable. The irony of this? I got the title in the mail yesterday. Sweet irony. We got our tax refund back April 18th.

So the Paid For PT Cruiser is sitting in the lot of our Chrysler dealer awaiting a diagnosis on Monday. And it may or may not be under warranty. So we may or may not get a rental car. I've got my fingers crossed, though. The fun begins on Monday morning when we have to cram 3 kids in car seats and two adults into a '94 Integra.

And this my children is why I'm tempted to take a thousand bucks and buy a junky looking car that runs decently and garage it "just in case".