A Brief Moment of Happy-ness

Life with Happy has been less than happy for the last few months. His "two" started pretty mild, but picked up around 2-1/2 and has intensified into a pretty attitudinal start to "three". There's mischievous taunting of Poet, punctuated by a lot of "NO!!!" shouted at Mommy and Daddy, all wrapped around lots of crying when he doesn't get his way.

But through all that, there are some small glimmers of the wonderful little boy who normally inhabits our house. For instance, today we were driving home from visiting Amy's folks. While flitting through one of a dozen small towns on our back-roads trip, Happy woke from his nap:

• Happy: DADDY, DADDY!!! (because sometimes shouting "DADDY" only once isn't enough to wake everyone in the car)
Me, while adjusting the rear view mirror so I could see him: Yeah buddy?
• Happy, smiling that sweet, beautiful smile that will someday get him in a WHOLE LOT of trouble: I love you very much!

He's never said that to me before, and certainly never unbidden. Made me want to grab him out of his seat and give him a big hug and kiss right there. Of course by night's end, he'd done something that again made me want to leave him with Grandma for a few years, but there, in that moment, he was my wonderful Happy boy again.

Merry Christmas, After All

Following yesterday's adventure, I got a phone call from the mechanic this morning. The initial guess from the shop was that I'd destroyed my car's clutch, which was the repair that was to have cost $1300. As luck would have it, it wasn't the clutch, but the CV shaft which bought the big one. And happily, the estimated cost for this repair is more in the $400 neigborhood.

Cue MAJOR sigh of relief :)

Blended Family

You may or may not know this, but ours is a blended family. That's right: Amy's car is automatic, mine is manual. Hers is a little bigger and more family-friendly, so we usually take it when we go places as a family. Since I work from home, mine doesn't get driven all that much.

Having a blended family does occasionally cause problems. Most often, the problems stem from me remembering which car I'm currently driving. I'll often try to downshift in Amy's car when I'm turning a corner, or I forget to put the car in park before shutting off the engine, which a) makes Amy nuts and b) causes the doors to remain locked (her car has this fancy feature that unlocks the doors when the car is shifted into park, but it only works, for whatever reason, if the engine is on). Once in a while, I'll forget that I'm driving my own car, and after putting on the parking brake I'll simply take my foot off the clutch, stalling the car. Today, I did a little worse than stall the car, I blew out my clutch. As I was backing into the drive today, I noticed the neighbors trash cans in the drive, so I wanted to be sporting and move them rather than run them over. When I took my foot off the clutch, instead of the usual lurch and then silence, there was a very loud WHA-BAAM! and the engine kept running. When I put the car into gear and tried driving, the engine revved, but the car didn't move.

Whoops...

So, Merry Christmas, Mr. Mechanic, as you are the beneficiary of my estimated $1300 repair.