The Adventures Never End

I had every intention of having a nice, quiet weekend...my last as a "single" wife. My teacher friend Anna and I had our Friday night date planned, which usually consists of going to the commisary (that's a grocery store on base) and then getting dinner and watching tv. We started our date night just fine. Went to the commisary and had no problems. We ordered chinese food on the way home. We got to Anna's house and she asks "do you remember me grabbing my keys?" Nope, sure don't. We were locked out. Well, her neighbor has a key to her house, but Jake was on his way to Wilmington to get his wife from the airport. Ok, no problem still. We call and drive to meet him to get the key to his house so we can get Anna's key. We're on our way back to get our chinese food and my car doesn't sound quite right. We stop to get the chinese food and when Anna returns to my car it sounds pretty bad. We start to go and we hear a grinding noise. Grinding noises are never good. We decide to keep driving because we really aren't far from her house and what else could we really do? We're about a 1/2 mile from her house, driving down the road and we hear "chink" as something falls from my car and hits the pavement. My heart sinks and I'm thinking..."Oh hell what do we do now?" We keep driving because we are close enough to Anna's house that I'm pretty sure we can make it there. And if we can't then we can get close enough to walk to her house and figure out what to do next. So I go to turn onto her road and I have to use all my might to turn the wheel. I have NO power steering. Not good. We finally make it to her house and by now the battery light is on and my car temp has shot up and the hood is steaming. I'm thinking the worst that the engine is quitting, the transmission, or that I did some stupid girl move and forgot to do some scheduled maintenance or something and have ruined my car. Anna and I unload the groceries and go inside to eat our chinese food. A bit later we call Jake to ask him some questions about what it could be. He sends us out to look under the hood. We looked and the serpentine belt was loose. Jake thinks it has to be something with the belt and nothing more. Anna and I then check all the fluids and are poking our heads around trying to figure out if we can see anything else that might be wrong. We even take a pic of us with my camera and our heads under the hood. I had just pulled the camera out from under the hood and BOOM! The hood slams shut. Anna is like "OMG, that could have been my head! It's time to go inside now." Jake comes home, he's the friendly neighborhood mechanic, and looks at my car. He determines it just needs an idler pulley. Apparently that is what hit the ground because it is totally gone. It shouldn't be too expensive to fix, which is good because when you hear part of your car hit the ground you instantly think "please don't let me die and how much is this going to cost me?" It rained all day so no fix today, but hopefully tomorrow we'll get it back in working order. I seem to have not so good luck with my vehicles. I think I better move back to "the big city" where I can take public transportation a lot. I will never forget the sound of something falling from my car and hitting the pavement as I'm driving. Thank God it happened just as it did though because this could have ended in a totally different way. I could have been stranded or hurt or left to figure out what was wrong all on my own.

Please can we just get my husband home asap before I have to suffer through any more adventures? It won't be too much longer at this point, but still. An interesting side note: He had called while I was driving to the chinese restaurant and had just hung up the phone with him when the trouble started. Thank goodness he wasn't on the phone as I heard my car go "chink" cause I can only imagine what he would have thought or heard. Poor guy would have been left on the boat wondering what the heck happened. Only a couple more days. I am SO excited to have my husband back home. I'll probably follow him everywhere that first day.