Forget the City Planning Degree, I Should Have Become a Mechanic

Ah, the car issue.

Overall, I'm really happy with my van. I promise, I'm grateful to have it, and I'm grateful it has stuck with us for as long as it has with as few problems as it has had. But it is starting to show its age in a few ways. Lately my driver's side window has been giving me problems, and last night it got stuck while I had it lowered and nothing I can do will get it back up. Bother. At least it happened while the kids are on break-- that makes it easier for me to get it into the shop and get it fixed. (Terence thinks we should just find a way to get it back up and leave it broken-- but then how can I go through a fast food drive through???? He has no idea how often I need to roll that window down.)

I still think of my van as a relatively new car so it throws me every time I have any kind of a problem. But lately it's been occurring to me that my faithful traveling companion is not as young as it used to be. I've been doing all these consumer surveys during the last month (I'll blog about that later) and frequently I get asked about the kinds of cars we own and our plans to buy a new one. I get the impression sometimes that for a household to own a 7 year old van and a 13 year old truck is kind of unusual. At the very least the surveys assume since that's the case, we must be planning to purchase a new car in the next couple of years.

Yikes! We have no money for a new car in the next couple of years. Last, baby, last! You have to hang on!

Still, if I could go back in time with our van purchase I would change one thing. Knowing that we planned to own the van until it completely gave up the ghost, I would have tried to avoid all the automatic gizmos. I know, nowadays it might not even be possible. And back in the day I really loved my automatic doors and windows (especially when I still had the remote that would open the doors from a distance). What a convenient thing when you had an armful of groceries and a baby!

But now we are paying the price. We've actually had issues with the automatic door motors for years now. (Had them fixed twice while the van was still under warranty.) I don't think the driver's side sliding door has worked right for five years now. Now we are having issues with the passenger side one too. Originally, I thought it would be no big deal when those motors gave out-- we could just switch them off and use the doors manually. However, the automatic doors are heavy, even when switched off, and the kids can't get those doors open or shut on their own. It may be convenient to have automatic doors when they work, but when they don't work, nothing is a bigger pain than to pull up in the drop off lane at school and have to get out and go around the car to shut the door behind the kids.

Well, at least I don't have a car payment. That's what I keep telling myself.