I'm So Proud Of Me!

Yesterday, Judah and I took Jeff, Jericho and our nephew Kody all over to our friend's house to help them put on their new roof. Apparently the thrill of getting to run around on a roof was more of an appeal than was driving around looking at potential future homes with mom and baby brother, but whatever.

Our car drama continues around here, and we're once again down to one vehicle. But our truck is being fixed as we speak, which I hope corrects that obnoxious backfiring problem.

My husband was pretty embarrassed when the truck backfired so loudly (and not once but three times in quick succession) on our driveway that several neighbors stepped out onto their front porches looking our direction because they were sure they'd just heard gunshots. Through the smoke of said backfiring, we saw them look curiously around, then realize that it was obviously just something wrong with their neighbors crappy cars again, and went back inside. *blushes*

So after dropping everyone off at the Chavez' home around midmorning, Judah and I took off, taking a different than usual route home. Due to road construction, we came to a daylight headlight area for a couple of miles, so I pulled on my headlights.

Long story short, we drove around for a couple of hours looking at potential properties, and got home just after lunch.

We went inside and I took a blissfully long 2 hour nap while Judah was down.

Then got up and putzed around for an hour or so until someone knocked at my door.

It was my neighbor lady who stopped by on her way out of the neighborhood to tell me she'd noticed that the car lights were on and thought I would like to know.

Yep, you guessed it. Dead battery.

Not wanting to admit it to bother my husband with such a trivial matter, I opted to call good old dad for advice on how to use the jumper cables, and my mother-in-law to come over to provide the working battery with which to jump my car.

My dad's sage advice: "There should be a red cord and a black cord. One clamp on each end is positive, one is negative...but I'm not positive which is negative or positive." *laughs heartily at his pun*

Over the next few minutes, he explained all the particulars, then told me to call him when I was done so he'd know I was okay (??!).

Apparently my dad didn't have much confidence in my abilities.

I'll show him, I thought as I hung up.

No sooner had I dug out the clamps did I realize I'd already forgotten if my dad had said whether the positive clamp should go on before the negative one or not, and fearful of electrocuting myself in front of my toddler son (securely strapped into his carseat) and my mother-in-law, and too proud to call my dad back pressed for time to delay, I broke down and called my husband over at our friends. He had to get down off the roof to answer the phone and advise me, and to tell me to head over there when I was done. After which he smugly says, "And Becky...don't do this again?"

I was tempted to send a Pix message with me sticking out my tongue at him, but I knew that his semi-useful cell phone was sitting on the counter in our kitchen, so I refrained, and hung up, growling like Marge Simpson does when she's annoyed.

So I carefully lay out the jumper cables on the driveway so that the ends are nowhere near each other.

For a moment, I'm a little bit wary, because my dad had said red and black and this set of jumper cables were orange all over. And rather decrepit, looking like they were held together by old, old duct tape.

The little patch of black cord peeking out at the base of only one clamp on each end of the cords was only mildly reasuring. And the fact that the metal handles were not covered in that rubbery stuff that tools are covered in was a little scary.

So there we were, staring under my mother-in-laws hood trying to figure out where to attatch the clamps. I finally decided on a bolt sticking up off the battery, and checking to be sure the black went with the black based clamp, I went for it.

I was fine.

Feeling my confidence grow, I boldly put the other one on. I was still alive.

Then I picked up the others, carefully holding them far apart, and clamped them to my own battery where they were both supposed to go. YAY! I did it!

My MIL jumped in her car and fired it up. We waited a minute or so, and then I turned mine on. It fired right up. We let it charge for a couple of minutes. I then managed to repeat the process without incident, removing the cables from my battery first.

My MIL was standing by her battery, and said, "Wait...since you were so brave...I want to try it. And she removed the first one safely.

"Don't let them touch" I found myself warning her.

She held the removed clamp far away, and removed the other.

We high fived, and Judah and I were on our way.

Ahhh, the feeling of accomplishment. I wonder if I could manage replacing the brakes on our 'new' car?

Nah--Jeff needs a little something to boost his confidence, too. We'll just leave that job to him. ;o)