...The Saga Continues...

So apparently God reads my blog and He decided that since I was so gung-ho to "behave better next time" He'd give me the opportunity while it was all still fresh in my mind.
We took our beloved money-monster in to the Auto shop as I mentioned and from all the symptoms, expected it to be transmission problems. I quickly noticed that as soon as you say the words "transmission problems" to people they all respond the same way.
"Oooo...ouch....thats not cheap!"
Excellent....just what I'm hoping to hear.
However, according to the mechanic our transmission was fine so he did a few things (flushed the transmission??) and said come back in a week so he could do it again.
We didn't last a week.
Six days after the first incident I was working...had a client in the car with me...and all her groceries...and it happened again. We were SO close to her house and I was on main street with no good place to pull the beast over and and I couldn't imagine what on earth we would do on foot and my next clients were waiting so I shifted down to second gear and limped the thing to her place; praying the whole time that it wouldn't blow up on us and that I wasn't ruining it even further! I got her home and tried to pull away and literally 3 blocks later, it refused to go any further. So I called ahead to say I was late, parked the car, and walked the rest of the way to the office. Thankfully it wasn't far.
I'm happy to report that I didn't cry and I didn't get angry. I was actually feeling quite proud of myself! My goodness I must have grown tremendously in strength and character in only 6 short days!! But I soon found out that the only real reason for my response is because I was automatically prioritizing worries in my head and the car was about third on the list. I got to it later on. While sitting in the dark van as we dropped off the kids it suddenly came crashing down and THEN, I wanted to weep.
But when it happened, I was most worried about work and the fact that I was supposed to be cooking a full Christmas turkey dinner for 12 people and I knew that every minute wasted with the car was setting us back for the evening.
As it was, by the time we had dinner, had santa deliver presents to everyone, and took a tour of the town Christmas lights, we were much later than anticipated. We ended up leaving the entire dinner mess so we could deliver the kids home on time and then went back to the office to clean up.
I was supposed to be finished work at 7pm and instead finished at 10pm! I called Justin to pick me up at 9 but we still had a huge mess when he showed up so Justin, my coworker, and I stayed another hour washing dishes and mopping floors.
Needless to say, the ride home was not a cheery one. But everything looks worse at night when you're tired so we dropped everything, our worries, our coats, and our deteriorating conversation in the entry and went to bed.
I was told in Bibleschool that sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is take a nap!
...
So...we had it towed to the shop and yes, the transmission is poo. Unfortunately since it's the holiday season, few things are open so it looks like it will continue to sit at the shop for another week or so. The good news is....as it sits there, we are saving on gas! :)
Thank you, thank you, thank you!- Brad and Steph for your little car on loan! I've actually grown quite fond of the thing! (BTW, this may be a good time to tell you that the E-brake broke on it. We'll have that fixed too before you get back!)