All Jacked Up

You know when your day is going along just fine and then....BAM...something annoying happens. Like you drop your phone and shatter it, or the washing machine hose decides it no longer wants to stay in the drain and floods the laundry room, or you lock yourself out of the house, or your kid decides to rub their hands and face on the freshly painted wall...well, you get the point (not that any of those things have ever happened to me before).

Today I came out of Target (where I was already slightly frustrated because I was trying to find a cute 1 piece bathing suit for vacation next month...apparently they don't make 1 pieces that fit over my thighs and my belly hangs out of the tankini's...arg....but of course that is a side note) and hopped in the car and drove to the end of the parking lot. I felt the rumbling the whole way. So I parked and low and behold, FLAT TIRE!!!!

Of course Phil is out of town and I wanted to be a big girl anyway and take care of it myself. So I pulled out my wallet to get the AAA card, oh, but darn, it expired in 2010...hmmmm...

So I did the next best thing I could think of...I called my girlfriend Kasie. I had barely gotten out that I had a flat tire and she said, "okay, where are you, I'll come get you!"

Seriously in 15 minutes (AAA would have made me wait at least an hour anyway) Kasie was at my rescue. She drove me back to my house so I could get a spare tire (long story about why I thought I didn't have one in my car, run-flat tires...long story short there actually is one in my car). We got back to Target and after settling our babies in Kasie's car with peppy children's music and puffs, we did a little back and forth between which jack to use (mine was made of PLASTIC...PLASTIC....Come on PEOPLE). We went with mine.

We did what all good mechanics do and loosened the lug nuts first, then started jacking the car up. Once we realized that the jack was upside down, we quickly fixed it :) but noticed that even though it was right side up now, it still didn't look too sturdy. So I lowered it back down and jacked it up again. This time it seemed better, although still slightly tilted.

I started loosening the lug nuts the rest of the way and...BOOM!!! The jack gave out and the car came slamming down on the tire. It seemed to happened in slow motion. All I could do was jump back and prepare for the worst. I absolutely thought the car frame was just going to hit the ground. But the lug nuts weren't off all the way and the tire held and the car came down on the tire without any issues.

After we thanked Jesus about 5 times that we had all our limbs and extremities, Kasie suggested that since we were at Target, I run in to see if I could buy and industrial jack. I asked the guy if they sold jacks...his actual response to me was, "no, but we have towing kits". What the heck would I do with a towing kit...I need a jack!!!

When I got back to the car we figured out how to get Kasie's jack out of her car (no easy task either:) and thankfully hers was MUCH sturdier than mine. The only problem was it took about 30 minutes to get it jacked up high enough because the little wrench used to elevate the jack was only able to rotate half way before it hit the ground. So each rotation she had to take the wrench out and re-load it half way! Of course! Needless to say it worked!!!!

Once we got the car jacked high enough then we struggled to get it at EXACTLY the right height for the lug nuts to line up with the tire rack (since my stupid car has a flush tire rack and we didn't have anything to push it up on).

At this point (almost an hour into the process) the FIRST and ONLY person came over to see if we needed help. Not that we needed any help at that point (Kasie was kicking butt), but I was shocked that no one else came to see if we needed help. Two men literally stood at their car and talked directly in our line of sight for 15 minutes and never came to check on us. I don't know what to make of all that (I like to think we just looked like we knew what we were doing, and we did for the most part), but it just seemed strange to me!

Anyhow, we got the tire on...screwed in the lug nuts in the star pattern, of course...dropped the jack...tightened the lug nuts and got giddy excited that we did it!!! If it hadn't been for our two babies scream crying most of the time in the car, we would have forgotten that we were even moms.

Our true mom moment did come though in the midst of our joy and excitement when we BOTH admitted that the first song that popped into our heads was, "we did it, we did it, we did it, yeah" from Dora the Explorer (if you know the song you are singing it right now, if you don't you don't want to).

That's fine, because we are moms...Moms who were all jacked up what we changed a tire by ourselves in the 25 degree weather!!!

And what would I do without my great friend Kasie, who saved me a ton of money, helped me keep my cool and made a great memory in the process!!!

All in a day's work!!!