In Which A Bad Weekend Makes For Good Crafting

It's all over. That's a plus. So Jaime's car tags expired at the end of July. But being broke now, and with the promise of money coming out our ears by mid-month, we really had no choice but to wait for the money to get him new tags. But I'm not doing a darn thing, so he had been taking my car to work. No biggie. Not ideal maybe, but nothing terrible.

Until Friday (only the 4th), when we both woke up from an afternoon nap (hey, just cause I don't do anything doesn't mean I can't get tired...) to find that his car was gone. We assumed that someone in the apartment office had it towed. Yeah, great! Jaime flipped out and after I finally calmed him down we spent the rest of the night trying to remember what "normal" was supposed to feel like. He talked to someone in the office Saturday, but she only works on Saturdays and had no idea what was going on. She seemed to deny that they had anything to do with it, suggested we try the police, and gave the name of the tow company they use. Hmmm, first hint that things weren't adding up.

So we searched for the phone number for this tow company, but they had no listing in the phone book or online. Must not get much business that way huh? Called the police station and they said that they can't tow a car from private property. Haha. Another dead end.

Meanwhile my wonderful Mommy, whom I may never speak ill of again, assured me that by Monday she would be able to get us the money we'd need to get the car back. Sure, she'd already given me $60 so we could pay our rent, but she's just that good. I got a lot of knitting done that weekend. Not much sleep, but my nervous fingers were flying! Here's some proof.

In honor of UFO August I've gone back to working on my Clapotis. It is so slow! And, I'm going to need another skein to make it as long as I want it. But I made progress none the less. You can click here for a close-up.

Sunday I went with my dad to Topeka (1.5-ish hours away) to see my Aunt Cathy in the hospital. She has been there for over a week now with some bad bladder infection turn kidney infection. I assume she isn't home yet, as I told my dad to keep my updated, but she was doing a bit better when I saw her. (Her kidney function was up to 25% and she had pretty much stopped hallucinating) On the trip, I got some work done on my socks. Gotta love passenger knitting.

Monday we called the office to get the number of the tow company. She apologized up and down, claiming that the tow company makes a sweep every so often and she didn't know whose car it was and she's soo so so so sorry. Hmmm. And gave us a cell phone number for the tow company. We called, they had the car. WOOOHOO! Yes it sucks, but it's better than it being stolen. Oh, and they'll even tow it back. No need to go to them. Again, I find this whole thing VERY ODD. But we want the darn car back, so ok.

We got the money they told us we needed, plus a little towards the car tags which we had to go get that day too. They called and said they were on their way, and to watch for them at around 11:45. Jaime, not wanting to miss them, goes outside at 11:30. At 12:30 they call and say they're running late (really??) and are probably 15 minutes away. At 1:00 they finally show. I watch from a window, and notice that they are having to jump start the car to get it parked. Hmmm, is that normal? I don't know much about cars, obviously.

Jaime comes back upstairs, not so happy. Turns out that the battery is beyond dead. The power locks wouldn't even work. The tow guys claim that the dome light was on when they picked it up. I don't believe it for a second myself. Oh, and they tried to charge us an additional $50 for towing the car back here. Which they didn't mention when totaling the charges over the phone and giving us no choice in the matter. Jaime said he only had $25 extra and they decided that was ok. People can be so kind.

So the car was back in the lot. And after an hour sitting on the floor at the DMV, we even had it's new tags on it. Sure, it won't move, but at least we know where it is. Jaime decided that he could change the battery, now we just needed the money to buy a new one. He was going to ask his boss for a loan, but he was away for a few days and it was making Jaime crazy not to have his car, and this whole ordeal, fixed and done. So I asked my mom for a wee bit more money. I will not complain the next time she asks me to vacuum the ceiling for her. At least not out loud.

Yesterday, Jaime got the battery and switched them out. I was terrified that after all this, something else would go wrong, but it seemed to do the trick. AHHHHHHHHHH!

I've also gone back to spinning again. I've been doing one length every day, and I can see such an improvement over the last skein I spun up. It isn't completely even, but much much more so. And I'm getting pretty good at adding in a new length of roving and even at reattaching the roving when there's a break. Those two things have been giving me the most problems so it's nice to be figuring them out. Of course, I still spin the spindle, park it and then draft, but it works for me so I'm not stressing it.


WW Update
I lost another good amount this past week, 4.2 pounds. I've so far lost 22.4 pounds and I'm so happy. I'm just a little over 10 pounds away from making my big 10% mark and I'm hoping to have it gone before my birthday in September. Wish me luck!

Have a great week everyone. I sure am going to try to :)