Death of a car

C and I drive very old Volvos. Well, we did, except that C's car died. It died died. It wouldn't start. He tried putting the paddles on it to shock it back to life, but alas, it was lost. We towed it to the garage and after the mechanic said, well, so far, I've found that you need a new engine, we said, stop right there and sent the car off to the donation junkyard.

So we're car shopping. My car today decided that it didn't want to change gears, which is a problem since it's an automatic and it's supposed to change gears (you know, automatically).

I know my car is twenty years old and it's tired.

I even had it in my head that I would drive it for ten years, until it was twenty years old, and then I would get a new car.

But now the time has come and I'm just not ready. Sigh.

Have you ever tried car shopping with an 18-month-old? It's short. You can go for a test drive and then you're pretty much done for the day. It's the perfect excuse to get away from slimy salesmen. Why don't women sell cars (aside from that hottie in the Sopranos who took a roll with Tony)?

Anyone have car buying advice? I'm pretty much open to anything.

Hello, officer

A is fascinated with the phone. Fascinated. He'll get a hold of it and push buttons. He's only called one person, I think, and that was on my cell, which I don't let him play with any more. Our home phone is so freaking complicated to use that it hasn't been a problem. There's no intuitive way to dial our phone.

Yesterday he was playing with the home phone. I took it away from him and pushed the End button, and noticed it said, "Line on hold." (Recently we switched phone packages and got call waiting, which I despise.) I clicked over and there was a recording in Spanish. I hung up.

Then we get a call coming through. It shows up as "unknown name, unknown number." I let it ring through to voice mail, which is my standard mode for unknown calls. It's election season in California and we get a lot of unknown numbers calling in the evening now.

They actually leave a message, so I check voice mail:

"Hello, this is the San Diego Police. There was a 9-1-1 hang up call from this number, so we are returning the call. If you are there, pick up. Again, this is the San Diego Police. Please pick up. Since nobody has picked up, we will be dispatching officers to Our Address..."

Oh shit on a shingle. I Google the SD police department and call the non-emergency number. Hello, I am a horrible mother with a one-year-old who can actually dial 911 but we're all fine here, thanks. You don't need to send anyone. I should be leaving to pick up my husband from work soon. I'm not just saying that; we really are fine. It's just me and this one-year-old. We live at the end of nowhere and I'd like to save the officers the trip and minimize the mortification and embarrassment I'm already drowning in.

Then we waited forty-five minutes, which was as long as I could possibly stand to wait, before leaving to pick up C. And nobody had knocked down the door while we were gone, so everything's okay.

But the phones are moving out of reach.

His father's son

We went to the zoo on Friday. We were walking up a pretty steep hill (up to the lemurs from Cat Canyon). A was walking behind the stroller, leaning on both sides. He had a sippy cup that I kept trying to put in the pocket of the stroller. He kept taking it out and fussing with the stroller so finally I stopped to let him do what he needed to do.

There's a rubber L-shaped latch that holds the stroller together when it's collapsed. It's located just above the basket. It's right on A's eye level.

He figured out that he could put his sippy cup in the basket, held upright by the longer arm of this latch. Insta-cup holder for the toddler set.

Does this not sound like exactly something C would do?

No year end in review

Good grief; I don't have time to keep up now.

We're back. We've been back a week. We went to Colorado for Christmas and had a fabulous time. A played in snow and with his cousins, which made him giggle madly.

We're at home now on the downward slope of C's liquid diet. Maybe by the end of this month he'll be back on solid foods.

A and I are back to our daily zoo treks but man, the zoo has been packed. What are all these people doing in our zoo? Anyway, we did finally get to see the new baby panda and the grizzly cubs, so we're all happy on a zoo front.

A has been adding words left and right. Cracker (in CO), car, apple, out.