Sunday morning Chad woke up late and running. usually he gets up around 6:30 to be at church for aproximatly 7:30-8:00. he work up at 7:29am--yikes. So he was running around frantically and got me out of bed to drive him into work. Stuffing his cherrios down his throat we took off for church. the lights were all red so I took the side streets to get there. I wasn't going quickly at all, but rounded a sharp corner and hit some black ice and slid us way up into a snowbank. Not the prettiest start to the morning. Chad did manage to push us out quickly and get to church.
Then Sunday afternoon as Chad put the finishing touches on his night sermon, I frantically tried to get our house in order, washing laundry and dishes, straightening up my curtain projects, making the bed, packing for myself and Chad, who because he got up late hadn't had time to pack for himself, buying the head light bulb for the car that needed to be switched, we thought, actually it was a messed up wire, loading the car at 5pm I was running late for my 4:30 practice for worship for the night service, and a touch flustered, and actually not feeling well.
We did get through service without any casualties and we were both excited to get on the road and out of town for a relaxing vacation. from then on in things were great until we got to our destination, Bangor, at 11pm Canadian time. Then, almost as soon as we got to the hotel (a step up from the hostel last summer) I got sick, and remained sick, running to the bathroom every few minutes all night and into the late afternoon Monday. Ah well. From then on in we watched lots of t.v. and slept, we even skipped out on breakfast (which is saying something with Chad along) just to lay around.
Monday afternoon (as I ran to the bathroom) we went downtown for some yummy padht tai for
a late lunch and then wandered around a bit in the freezing cold. Bed, Bath & Beyond was next on the list of places to see and Chad found a really cool knife block for our wedding set that doesn't have slots but little rubber things-pretty cool, he was very excited. Then to Burlington Coat Factory where Chad had to pull me away from all the cutsie childrens clothing for our neices, we did come home with one little outfit for each of them. a little more wandering at Borders bookstore where we both found books we wanted and talked ourselves out of and left on the shelves and we found ourselves at Chili's for supper--oh yum! I love Chili's and we had the most amazing chocolate lava cake for dessert! Then back to the bookstore to buy our books and back to the hotel to read and watch House and I fell asleep pronto- Holiday is so exhausting! :) A perfect day (minus the running to the bathroom!)
Tuesday we were up a bit earlier and got some continental breakfast in and then watched some more cheesy Hallmark channel before we headed out the door. yes, we had to go back and look at Chad's knife block at Bed, Bath & Beyond and Linin's and Things to see if they had it, then to the Olive Garden for a yummy lupper. We did then go wander around the mall where we found the Yankee Candle Shop and I COULD have spent tons of money, if we'd had some, instead I got 2 votives, one smells like icing! That was it of interest at the mall, so we went to Starbucks for a Chai and Carmel Machiatoo and then to the Movies, where they have this amazing tuesday deal, a ticket for $5.25! We decided to go see Wild Hogs and I couldn't recommend it enough! LOL! I laughed so hard I thought I might pee myself and I will definilty have to see it again! Go See it!We went back to our hotel/hostel and lit my icing candle and ate some ringolos and watched some t.v. before we called it quits for the night.
Wednesday came nice and pleasant with no signs of trouble (foreshadowing) and we pulled out after our contenential breakfast to hit the road early for home. We left bangor around 10am and made plans to be home around 1pm. We decided to stop off in Houlton after a pleasant drive to gas up with cheap US prices. Stopping at a red light I put the car in first gear, well I tried, and it wouldn't go, so I rolled into the Irving. There we messed with the car but to no avail. Chad found a little shop around back the Irving so he pushed it back there where we found out that the clutch had gone and they weren't able to fix it until thursday, and it would likely cost us $300-$500-- yikes. Money we didn't have. The guy was great and showed us how to drive without a clutch, our goal was to just get the car home and we'd make a decision about what to do with it once we got it on our own turf.
We FILLED THE CAR WITH GAS, yes FILLED IT, to the top, right to the brim, and got in to pull away and bam, the clutch blew all the way and the transmission may have gone as well. Things were not looking good. Long story short after a run in the cold to walmart for a calling card, a rediculous amount of phonecalls to find my dad at work for his opinion, we realized we just weren't going to be able to afford to fix the car and as a '92 it didn't really have much of a leg to stand on anyway. So in the freezing cold we cleaned out our car and said our farwells (Chad a little distraught it hadn't rolled over to 300,000k --it would have had we made it home) and got ahold of Good ol' Shelley who was on March break and agreed to come to Houlton to get us.
Waiting in the Irving with all of our belongings as they towed away our car for the crusher, face pressed up against the window, I will admit I had a moment of extremly overwhelming financial worry. Wow, we hadn't planned on paying for a car with our income tax return, we have weeks to wait for it to return...what do we do until then? yikes. happy holiday. Hard not to wish we hadn't run away to Bangor to hide out in a hotel for 2 days, hard not to wish a lot of things, but glad of a lot of things too, it didn't go on the highway when we were miles from anything, it hadn't gone in Bangor, farther from home....
So it was after 6pm when Shelley picked us up at the Irving. We pulled into a Tims for coffee (and maybe we'd roll up the rim and win a car?!) this side of the border only to have a transport haulling crushed vehicles come in behind us-- ironic? I think.... like rain on your wedding day, and a free ride when you've already paid.....
So that's our holiday adventure. I blogged I wouldn't have anything to blog about when we got back, I was so wrong. Adventure follows us.
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