Thwarted

On my last day of Zoo Camp chauffeuring duty, my Escape Hybrid stopped hybriding.  The battery stopped charging and assisting, and I was tooling around town on the undersized gasoline engine.  I called the dealership as soon as I got home Friday afternoon and made arrangements to bring it in this morning.

Now, here's what I planned on happening: I left the kids with my mom and drove up to the dealership with a bag full of all the magazines I'm still working on catching up on.  (Except for the new ones that keep sneaking in my mailbox and go on the top of the pile, I'm down to the seasonals now -- Spring 2011.  Light at the end of the tunnel!)  I knew that it would take all day and maybe more than that, but I went prepared to sit in the waiting room all day, reading magazines and watching the DIY network on the big TV.  (I've loved watching all the renovations and makeovers since Ty Pennington was only an occasional carpenter on "Trading Spaces.")  Me time!

Only the service guy would have none of it.  He told me he wouldn't even start looking at the car until 2 o'clock and offered a courtesy van to take me home.  I turned it down once, saying I'd wait and see what happened, but I couldn't come up with a good reason to refuse a second time.  "I'd rather sit and read magazines and watch TV in your waiting room all day" didn't seem like something I could try to explain.  So I came home feeling a bit sulky about my dream deferred.  Car is still at the dealership, at least overnight; they aren't entirely sure what's wrong with it yet.