Letting Go of History

First things first, I have got to get on some kind of schedule for posting.  It's so easy to procrastinate.  Unfortunately, then all these things that I want to blog about pile up and/or get outdated.

So the first thing I wanted to post about is more of a public service announcement.  Did you know that in Ontario when you return licence plates for a refund, they keep your plates!?  Perhaps it should have been common sense to me but I didn't realize that.  At first I wasn't sure that the $10 refund I received was worth letting go of our old plates.  However, I was able to put things in perspective - the paint on the plates was peeling, they weren't our first ever set of plates (we lost those), and I'm supposed to betting rid of things we don't need.  I'm suppressing my hoarding tendencies and feeling the freedom from letting things go.  The biggest regret I have is that the plates had a really cool big stack of renewal stickers on it.

So why was I returning my plates?  That's a whole other story.  Our car broke down on Hwy 401 near Cambridge about a month ago, thank goodness it wasn't the van.  My husband and I were both returning home from his brother's wedding.  We had gone separately due to my husband's work schedule.  When he asked if I wanted to drive the car instead of the van (with our four children and a niece inside) I politely declined.  I've never trusted that car and we wouldn't have bought it if not for the fact that he insisted on a manual transmission.  While I prefer manual, there's more selection for a used car if you're willing to go automatic.

Anyway, shortly into our trip home the car broke down.  Fortunately, he was close behind me at the time so I noticed him pull off in my rear-view mirror.  I went to the next exit, turned around and drove back.  I had our cell phone with us at the time but since we have just the one phone, it's not like he could call me or anything.  The whole way back I was thinking, "I hope that wasn't someone else and now I'm going back for nothing."  In retrospect, that was kind of a dumb thing to think.  If it was him, it meant bad news for us.  As it is, it was, indeed, him.

So I pulled off, gave him the phone so he could call Canadian Tire Roadside Assistance.  There was some debate about where to get the car towed but we ended up just getting it towed to Canadian Tire in Cambridge.  Now, I will say right off, under normal circumstances I will not take a car to get serviced at Canadian Tire.  I've had horrible experiences with Canadian Tire garages in the past (I love their roadside assistance though).  If I had thought about it more, I would have had the car towed to my sister's mechanic in Waterloo or the mechanic we used to deal with when we lived in Kitchener.  I wasn't thinking so to Canadian Tire it went.

One cool thing that happened is that the tow truck dispatcher called the cell phone for some info.  In doing so she recognized the number as one that belonged to someone from where she grew up.  I asked her name and it turns out we went to school together.  The last time I saw her, she was taking pictures of one of my kids at the Sears Portait Studio.

A second cool thing is that while we were on the phone and the kids were in the van Tertia lost a tooth.  This was her second lost tooth.  A couple weeks prior to this lost tooth she noticed her adult tooth growing in behind the baby tooth.  After some internet research to determine how serious it was I learned that this is fairly common and is called shark teeth.  I figured that I'd just wait and see what happened.  Fortunately, her baby tooth loosened on it's own and came out.

Another cool thing that happened is that where the car broke down was quite close to an old rest stop so I pulled up there and let the kids out without worrying about them being on the side of a major highway.  My husband and I were very impressed with the picnic tables.  We would love picnic tables like this at our house.

So the car got picked up and we went on our merry way home.  Our church picnic had been scheduled for that afternoon.  While we didn't make it for the beginning of the picnic, we made it for the food.

Since I returned the plates, it should be obvious that the car was a write-off.  The garage determined that the timing belt had gone.  Considering that the car had over 300K km on it, I'm not that surprised.  Once the timing belt goes it's so likely that there's engine damage that there's no point repairing it.  While speaking with the garage I asked him if he could just send it to a wrecker.  He responded, "What about the wood?"  Oh yeah,  my sister had just bought a house and the previous owner had left a lot of cedar rails that they didn't want.  I had filled the car with the ones that would fit in it, figuring that I'd pick up the longer ones at a later date.  So now I had a car full of wood.  The question was whether it was worth the trip. 

I called the wrecker and he needed the ownership signed over to him anyway so I planned to go on a Tuesday.  This worked out perfectly since my husband, who is usually gone Monday to Friday with his job, ended up with Tuesday off.  We went down Tuesday with the van, cleaned out the car then continued to my sister's and picked up the remainder of the rails since they would fit in the van.  Of course, they pawned off some other stuff on us that they didn't want.  I'm a sucker for stuff.

We were planning on getting another car.  My husband's work is an hour and a half away and while he generally just needs to be dropped of Monday and picked up Friday, it's a hassle.  What we realized though, is that it's just as cheap for him to rent a car every weekend.  He gets a much better car, we don't have to pay insurance for a second vehicle (our insurance covers rentals with zero deductible), we have no maintenance or repairs on it and if we need a truck some weekend, he'll just rent one.  We'll see how it goes over the next few months.  Currently we're getting the car from Discount Car and Truck Rental.  We get it for $9.99 per day for one driver or $19.99 for two drivers - not bad.

Starting out . . . again.

I've started a few blogs over the past couple of years.  I'm usually good about posting near the beginning but then they peter off.  I've never been completely satisfied with them because I've found them somewhat confining.  Each of the blogs I've started has had a fairly specific topic.  While this approach works wonderfully for some people, it doesn't fit me.  I'm interested in all kinds of different things and I'd like to post about many of them.  So how do I make them all fit together.

My husband recently started a blog of his own.  It was inspired due to his recent career change.  He is now a professional truck driver and his blog shows a little glimpse into some of his experiences.  The title for his blog is simply, "I'm Driving a Truck Now".  Building on his theme, I've entitled mine, "I'm Driving a Van Now".  I figured that the fact that I drive a van pretty much sums up what a lot of my life is currently about.

We purchased our mini-van when our fourth child was born.  Up until that time we drove cars and, for a time, we were car-less.  We also drove a snowmobile too.  The birth of our fourth child was a cross-roads for us.  We would no longer all fit in a car.  (I would have really liked a Volvo with the rear-facing seats in the back but those things are super-hard to find.)  Most SUV's are built to haul stuff and not people so we settled for a 2004 Ford Freestar.  I wanted roof racks and a rear seat that folded flat.  Flat-folding middle seats would have been nice too but I also wanted to pay cash and those options seemed to be mutually exclusive at the time.

Anyway, the point is, I drive a minivan.  Why?  Because I have four children.  Not everything on this blog will be about my children but many of the things will be inspired by them.  For example, I would have been interested in things like healthy eating even if I had never had children but the desire to feed my children well has increased my interest in healthy eating.

The last little bit of introduction will be introducing my family.  While nothing on the internet should be treated as all that private and I'm sure people could find out their names if they really wanted to, I'm not comfortable calling my children by their names on a public blog.  Honestly, trying to come up with a blog name and screen-names for my children are the main reasons I've been putting off this blog for so long.  I have taken inspiration from the movie Stardust for the screen-names for my children.  My oldest will be Prima, the next will be Secundus, the third will be Tertia and the fourth will be Quatrus.  (If you haven't figured it out, it goes girl - boy - girl - boy.  I still have to come up with a name for my husband.