A Moment of Homesickness

Life has continued to be pretty crazy for us lately. I really thought that once the holidays passed, we'd be able to come up for air and be a little more relaxed. So far, we are a week past the holidays (two past Christmas already, how????) and I still feel like I just can't get caught up. My to-do list has grown so long that it has actually started to spawn new sub-to-do lists. I am a girl who loves a good list but that's just madness.

Eric starts work today. It's not the big Career Change job (that I still have to tell you about, but don't worry, that's on both a main to-do list and a sub-to-do list, so you know I really mean it), but rather just an interim job until the Big Exciting Job begins.

Regardless of the purpose of the job, yesterday was our last day together as a family before joining the World of the Working once again. The weather was pretty nice and we had some Christmas money to spend, so we decided to spend our final Sunday at Ellenton Outlet Mall, which is about 40 minutes away from us. We loaded up the little one after her first morning nap and hopped on the interstate, headed towards great bargains.

As our journey wore on, I commented to Eric that the car felt a bit rumbly. It was shaky, but not so pronounced that we could be sure it wasn't just a rough bumpy road or something. (Also, we haven't driven a car with any regularity since 2005, so cut our ignorance some slack.) We were pretty close to our exit, so we decided to just slow it down a bit and check out the car when we got to the mall. Well, not so fast, says our car. All of a sudden, BAM! Blowout! Pieces of tire everywhere! Luckily, Eric maintained control like a pro and pulled over onto the grassy shoulder. We got out to assess the damage.

Um. Our tire has hair.

Anyone have a little Fix-A-Flat?

So there we were, on the side of the road, with Ellenton Outlet Mall in sight just across the interstate, but no way to get there.

Our car on the side of the road. That sign across the street is Ellenton. So close yet so far, sigh.

Eric went right to work replacing what was once our rear left tire with what turned out to be our rather flat donut. So, yay, trade one flat tire for an even smaller flat tire! Fool proof plan. In so doing, he also stepped in a fire ant hill and got his feet bitten up pretty badly. Welcome back to Florida, Eric! Remember fire ants?

Luckily there was a Tire Kingdom only about a mile and a half off our exit, which we were so close to anyway. All of our tires were in pretty bad shape so much to the chagrin of our bank account, we had all four tires replaced. I realize this is standard car maintenance, but we hadn't planned to have to do this right away so we were sad people when that total rang up.

We got our car from my grandmother, and it really is a good car. It's a 1997 but had only 28,000 miles on it when we got it from her. She almost never drove it. Yet, we've only been driving it about a month and already we've had a tire blowout (and now, all four replaced), the air conditioning has stopped working, two of the four windows don't go down and a tail light is out. Granted, none of these things are vital to the overall running of the car (tires excluded), but when all of those things happen in the span of about two weeks I just get all, I HATE CARS.

So that is where my moment of homesickness came in. I was walking Ellie around while we waited for Tire Kingdom to do their thing, sweating buckets in January. We were paying for our first of many car repairs after a potentially rather dangerous tire blowout on the interstate. Poor Eric's feet were a hearty lunch for a pile of fire ants. It was just a little too much Florida negativity all at once and all I could think was, "This sucks. Cars suck. Fire ants suck. It's too hot for January. I MISS THE SUBWAY."

On the positive side, we were so lucky. The blowout happened when we were almost to our exit, not in the middle of nowhere or, heaven forbid, on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Eric maintained control and we pulled off to safety without incident. The cars behind us avoided flying rubber and there were no accidents. Our flat donut made it to the repair shop, which was both nearby and open. We were together and not in any real hurry for the day. Everything really worked out as well as it could have and we did even make it to Ellenton for some shopping after all.

And, at least Ellie had a great day. She was having a grand old time out in the sun while her daddy changed a tire, she loved wandering around the Tire Kingdom neighborhood, she made good friends with people in the waiting room, and she had a blast shopping. Babies don't care about flat tires, I suppose.

Having the time of her life in the Tire Kingdom waiting room

As for Ellie's parents, I know we'll eventually settle in just fine, but yesterday was a reminder that it will take a little bit of adjusting to get used to Florida life again. It's not all beaches and sunshine, you know?

And I do really miss the subway.