Stalled, Stranded, and Stuffed

I've had better days! Yesterday after slogging through house clean up, I decided I needed to go to get groceries and to go to the library. Got in the car and --nothin'--dead battery. How does this happen? It was fine on Monday when I took the kids back to Rachel.

As you know, I don't do well completely freak out with stalled cars. Managed to get Rick on the phone and an hour later he came home and charged my dead battery. I drove around for quite a while. Stopped at the library and it started there, but when I came out of Sam's Club it was totally dead.  I rolled down the windows and then couldn't get them back up (no power.) Called Rick, called roadside assistance. The call center is in Florida, by the way, about as far from AZ as it could be. She couldn't even find the town Surprise on her mapping system. Finally, I read the address off the side of the bldg. to her and she used my phone tracker to pinpoint me. (laser precision--huh?) They were very nice but the jumper guy was scheduled for an hour or more until arrival. So I waited and waited. I didn't want to leave the car because the windows were down and though the car was inoperable I worried about leaving it wide open.

I started reading one of my library books-- totally unable to concentrate... Finally, I raised my hood so the roadside mechanic could find me if/when he arrived. Several nice people offered to jump start me, but I told them I had someone coming. I just didn't want a complete stranger, however well intended, to blow up my defunct battery. A little over an hour later, Coco's Towing rolls into the Sam's Club parking lot.
"The King of Towing" (it was written on his truck), a big burly guy with a shaved head and an earring, put a charger on the battery and voila--I was started. He suggested I take it right to the service department (which is 15 miles away.) I barely had time to get there before they closed.

Forty-eight minutes,  a new battery, and $90 later, we were off. (Rick had arrived by then.) I was so disgusted with my ride, we decided to go to Nissan and look at a Juke--the turbo charged, tiny car. After three hours of haggling, we find out that car salesmen are NOT as hungry for sales as they claim to be. They would give us almost nothing for my car and would gladly charge bunches for the Juke (which is like 1/2 of my present car.) Our car is paid for and I have an extended warranty. It's just that I hate any car that strands me, and this one has done it three times in a couple of month's time.

Nevertheless, I am going to love my ailing '08 Hyandai. New car shopping was as icky an experience as I remember it being from years before. What is it with car shopping!! I'd rather have a full body waxing...

And to add to my fate this morning, I awoke to a throbbing, sinus headache--solid cement in that deadly triangle near my fast-shriveling brain. I vowed I'd go to a church ladies luncheon today at twelve. (I'm so anti-social that the Relief Society thinks I'm an unbeliever.)

I will try to drag myself off my death couch and present a smiling face. And if the car starts and I'm able to get there, I'm sure I'll have a darn good time. You betcha!

Post Script: As if I couldn't get any more pathetic this week--I raced over to the luncheon after heavy medication. Went in the restaurant and no one was there. Made several calls and finally discovered it was YESTERDAY. I couldn't have gone anyway because my battery was DEAD YESTERDAY!! Sheesh! It just gets better and better.