Sometimes, weird things happen and you just have to believe that someone was watching out for you despite yourself. One of those things happened Friday afternoon.
I attended a conference in Salt Lake all day. (In fact, I ran into two people from my social work cohort who were there as well which was fun. Here is the picture of us--Lori Neil and Amber Sagers.)
But that is not the story---
I was heading home about 4:00--tired from 8 hours of very informative lectures--when I started having this conversation in my head. "I could stop and meet Gary at theatre and then he could go home and I could bring Jena home." "But I am tired and he will already be planning to stay and has a book or something to do already. I don't have a book or anything to read." "I could go shopping." and so it went back and forth in my head. "Gary had already left to bring Jena down to theatre so I wouldn't be able to save him a trip, so maybe I will just go home." I really thought I had convinced myself to head straight home as I was so tired....but when I got to the exit for the theatre, I took it and decided to at least call Gary and make the offer. I knew he had a busy day as well and maybe he would appreciate some quiet time at home.
I pulled over in a gas station and called. He indicated that he was good to stay with Jena and bring her home, so I turned on the car to head home--feeling like a good wife because I had made the offer....but as I pulled out of the parking lot, the car felt odd and then a light began flashing and a bell began dinging. I pulled over into the nearest parking lot and called Gary again.
So the long and short of it was that we ended up having to have the car towed to our preferred car repair shop (so Gary waited at the theatre for the tow truck while I took Jena home after all.) and then after they determined that they couldn't fix it, we had to have it towed to the dealership where it is sitting at the current moment.
But the funny thing is. The car was driving fine when I pulled off a very busy freeway to call Gary the first time. However, if I hadn't pulled off, it is likely that I would have lost power on the freeway (the car had gone into "limp mode" Gary said.) and that would have been a much bigger problem than dealing with it in Centerville by the theatre. So not what we planned, but a blessing in disguise and I was grateful--except for the whole breaking down to begin with. But like much of life, we often only see the blessings and tender mercies in the middle of the hard (or simply annoying) stuff!
