Just when you think you've got to the end of week without maiming either yourself or the children, along come a set of circumstances fit to try the best goodwill of anyone.
I'm sitting here freezing in my little corner of the dining room, which is sandwiched between two doors. I'm freezing because the job allocated to my husband, checking the oil level, wasn't done. No oil delivery until later on, so this morning's activites are reduced to me telling said children not to leave the internal doors open, to try and conserve the heat generated by the breathing of six children.
I'm also waiting to see what the garage have to say about my car. I called into them on Tuesday to book it in for today to get it's emissions sorted out. We have a test for cars over a certain age here: the NCT - like the MOT only Irish. It's done every two years. This time, not wanting to get stung like the last time (where they ruined a perfectly good set of back brakes!), I didn't bother with all the pre-testing business, opting for my little 1999 Peugeot 106 to fail for whatever reasons.
Guess what? It failed. Rust under the bonnet, non-matching tyres on the back axle, and a wee problem with emissions at high revs - and they did rev the hell out of it in the test centre. I was there in the waiting room with all the men who knew how their cars would perform, pretending it wasn't mine.
So, a new bonnet was procured, resprayed the right colour and fitted, and the right tyre put back on the back wheel, by yours truly. When they were giving out useful husbands, I seem to have been out the back having a fag. I'm now just waiting to see what the emissions end of things throws up. When I called the other day to the garage, the mechanic nearly choked on his teeth, so deep was the sucking in sound. I thought I might have to administer mouth-to-mouth on him!
Fingers crossed - stressing calamities tend to come in threes, so they say, so I'm not holding me breath to see what the last one is... maybe I can count Half-term itself???
8 comments:
Yes! 1st! You can`t get good husbands for love nor money, so my "sis" tells me. not that i`m bothered of course. After all, what would i want a wife for? I haven`t got a car!!
Ha Ha! You had me rolling in the aisle with this one (figuratively speaking you understand - our house doesn't stretch to aisles!) to try and conserve the heat generated by the breathing of six children.
was my favourite line - but then the description of the mechanic sucking in his breath was also hard to beat!!! Hilarious.
Now (she says after recovering from all the laughter) Seriously -: Hope your heating is back on board and that your car will pass with flying colours.
Me too, I had a real belly laugh, which cheered me up immeasurably, since I've been trying to forget that the new paint on the living room walls is not the planned terracotta but pink (youngest child's comment, 'Are you doing chick-lit next?'); to convince myself that the scratches on the parquet flooring will disappear with beeswax; and to discover a sound mechanical, not magical, reason why the electric shutters in the room will no longer close.
Women would make far better mechanics - men are too obsessed with emissions by far and I would say that administering 'mouth to mouth' on a mechanic is only advisable under extreme circumstances!
Minx - don't talk to me about emissions - just back from Dublin, apres the rugby match and the emissions in the pubs would have your eyes watering. That farty smell that only Guiness-consumed-the-night-before gives...
Lee - I know where you're coming from re: proposed colours and the reality - it all depends on what was on the wall previously - I have learned this fact to my cost in the past!
CB - thanks - I was going for the humorous, sometimes it's hard to tell with only words alone. My best friend thinks that tales from our house are particularly side-splitting - well she's always laughing at me... or is that with me...?
John-G hello and welcome to the madness...! Hope your friend Tirgger is behaving and if not, I hope you're recording it! Ah - I see you are! :)
I hope you're all cosy again with the 106 putting away demurely and acceptably.
My Mum had a great saying, "Are you congentaliy incapable of shutting a door?" but she didn't appreciate us saying, "You should know Mum!"
Hats off on changing a wheel, I wouldn't know where to start, but then I'm the decorator, cook and gardener so I'm due a break.
The expressions here vary from were you born in a barn, or were you born in a hospital with swinging doors... Changing a wheel in a relatively clean drive with access to soap and water afterwards is no problem - it's when it occurs at the side of a dirty, wintry, rainy road at night without a torch and something to clean (thaw out) your hands with afterwards that it becomes a pain.
But having said that - most times I was caught out with a flat, a gentleman would come to the rescue by stopping and changing it for me - who says chivalry is dead..?
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