Not Such a Bad Day

Things move at a different pace for us on Wednesdays. That is normally the day that Matt's parents pick Harper up from school and take her to lunch, giving Michael and I a little extra time to relax or run errands, etc. Lately his physical therapist has been coming every other Wednesday and this week was one of those physical therapy days.

I knew Harper was going back to Nana and Dziatku's house to help decorate for Easter, so after the physical therapist came I fed Michael a little something to tide him over and scuttled out to run a couple of quick errands Or so I thought.

As we were driving down a busy street a few miles from our house the entire car began to shake and shudder. Not just the steering wheel, the entire car, it was like being on some sort of awful amusement park ride. I pulled into a Burger King parking lot and stopped to assess the situation.

My car is old-ish, but has served me (us) very well. The milage is not too high, but I have had it for nine years now and it has suffered a bit of wear and tear. I momentarily contemplated trying to drive it to our mechanic, but having a one-year-old in the back seat made me less inclined to take chances on a busy road.

A couple of phone calls later, Michael and I were just hanging out, waiting for both my father-in-law and AAA. Thankfully it was a beautiful day. I stood just outside the car, with the door open, next to Michael's seat. He, now overdue for both lunch and a nap, played contentedly with my car keys (closely supervised, of course) until Mike arrived. As I was securing Michael's car seat in my father-in-law's minivan, the tow truck arrived. And before I knew it the car had been towed and we were safely back at home.

I know I have said before that Michael is a calm and easy-going baby - this is just another instance in which our little man happily rolled with the punches.

We were only without the car, which needed some tune-up work (badly, apparently!), for one day.

I don't know if it was the sunshine, or the fact that we didn't have anywhere we had to be, or Michael being so cooperative, but I was kind of surprised at how calm I felt about the entire situation. Sure it was a pain in the rear, and I wasn't happy about it, but on another day that is the kind of thing that might have made me feel completely unraveled. . .

I wish I could bottle the calm from that afternoon and pull it out for use in future stressful situations.