Vehicular drama

Things have sorted themselves out reasonably well today, so it looks as if I can put off my nervous breakdown for the time being, although I've given it a pager and asked it to remain on standby.

1) Poppy has authorized us to find a mechanic for Buddy so that his (Buddy's, not my dad's) transmission can be rebuilt, which my dad feels would be a better value than buying a new car altogether. After Buddy is fixed, my dad says that we can continue driving it as long as we need to, and considering that this repair is going to be about $1,200, I think my dad needs a really super awesometastic Father's Day gift, don't you? I usually buy him a Kroger's gift card loaded with enough cash so that he can buy a couple of their rotisserie chickens on the way home from the golf course, but I think this year, we might do more money, like maybe enough for about a thousand rotisserie chickens. Perhaps with bows tied around their waists.

2) My husband's bosses, who are some of the nicest people ever to walk God's good earth, have arranged for him to borrow a car until either Applesauce Anne or Buddy is fixed, whichever comes first. Bless them.

3) Larry the mechanic told us yesterday evening that Applesauce Anne is not as hideously damaged as we feared and that she'll be out of his convalescent hospital and back in our loving possession within two weeks. It's going to cost a pretty penny, but again -- better the car you know than one you don't.

4) I have been thinking about reviewing one of my favorite childhood books, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, to see if I can figure out how my husband can tesseract to his place of business and how the girls and I can tesseract to the 4-H meeting or the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It would be faster and way cheaper on gas. A tesseract, for any of you who didn't read this most marvelous book, is a time-wrinkle -- a way of traveling through space that confounds the notion that the shortest distance between two places is a straight line.