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.