why we are buying a cell phone
You know how every once in awhile you have one of those things happen to you that is just a good story without even having to exagerate. Well this is one of those. First off let me lay a little background for you. 1. My husband is going to College in the city and so he is commuting everyday with another guy. 2.We do not own a cell phone 3. we drive a gutless taurus stationwagon. 4.We have a baby who of course needs to ride in an infant car seat. 5.groceries in a small town are stupidly more expensive than in the city and students get a 10% discount at Sobeys
With all that in mind I tell you this story.
Part 1
Yesterday we had the brilliant idea that instead of catching a ride home with his usual ride I would drive in to the city to pick my husband up after school and then we would go for groceries there and come home.
Sounds simple enough right?. Well because we dont have a cell phone we agreed a time and place to meet and just left it at that. Around 1:00 I noticed that it was snowing a bit so I thought I would head in early in case the roads got bad. By the time I got baby packed up and everything ready to go it was already 2:00 and the weather had turned to blowing snow and fog. I Phoned the cell phone of the guy who my husband was going to school with and asked what the weather was like there and I was told it was fine. I decided to try going anyways because I figured it was probably just happening right around our town. So away we go. Well when we hit the highway the weather was absolutely terrible. I couldnt see anything and I got stuck behind a little old man who was doing 40 km/h. It took me 40 minutes to do a drive that is usually 15 minutes. At that point I decided to head for home and give it a try again a little later in the day. As I was on my way home I was breaking and my breaks started making this terrible grinding noise and my litte green stationwagon started lurching. I made it home safely and immediately called the mechanic. He said to bring it in right away. I called my husbands commuter friend to say I wasnt coming but couldnt get through. I again loaded up the baby and took off to the mechanic. As I pulled in and hit the breaks I just kept going right on by the shop. After I drifted to stop I backed up and eased my way into the shop. Although they were super busy they pulled one of their guys to work on my car and we switched my baby seat into an extra vehicle they had there to give me a ride back home.
Part 2
After a few hours I get a call from the garage. Our conversation goes something like this.
Mechanic: (very condesendingly)um have you driven this car in icy conditions before?
Me: Yes and it hasnt done this before
Mechanic: Well we took your wheels off and there is nothing wrong.
Me: How can there be nothing wrong? It made a really awful sound and the car shuddered.(you know that sound your car makes when you drive over rumble strips just before a stop sign on the hiway. thats what it was like)
Mechanic:That is just the sound of your ABS kicking in. You havent had this car very long have you?
Me: No
Mechanic: well I will bring the car back for you.
Me: (thinking to myself)great they think Im an idiot
Part 3
I get the car back with just enough time to book it to the city and pick up my husband. I will only be about 10 minutes late. I quick reload the car seat and pack up the baby. Away I go again. The roads are clear so I figure its clear sailing from here on in.
I get less than five minutes from my town when a semi drives past me and sprays my winshield with snowy gook. I flip on my wipers only to discover that they arent working. I decide to pull over at the next farm and clean my windshield and fix my wipers. This should make me about 15 minutes late but safety first right. I signal and begin breaking a ways from the driveway I am wanting to turn into. I look in my rearview mirror to see the car behind me quickly approaching and showing no signs of slowing down to avoid me. At the last second I gun it and turn into the drive way being narrowly missed by the before mentioned car. As I rip into the snowy driveway I hit the breaks which lock(Isnt ABS that has nothing wrong with it suppose to prevent your breaks from locking?) and I go sliding into the ditch. Im stuck bad and although I tried to get myself out, my gutless stationwagon is hopeless. I step out into knee deep snow and go to the farm house. Luckily the lady of the farm is home and welcomes me and the baby in. Im now 20 minutes late. She phones her husband at the rental shop he owns (ironically placed next door to my house) and he comes out with a big truck and chains. He kindly gets me out and although I again try to phone my husband on his friends cell phone I still cannot get through. 45 miniutes late.
I again load up the baby and again hit the road. As I am driving the slush of the road and the spray from passing vehicles covers my windshield. Before long I am out of washer fluid. As I am debating on attempting to pull over again and use some baby wipes to clean the windshield, I see a lone country gas station. I pull in and ask for some washer fluid. It appears they are all out. After some looking the teenage girl working the place finds a bottle in the back. I get it filled up and again hit the road. I am now an hour late.
The last of the trip I am tense and frustrated but at least I make it with no more incidents. I pick up my husband and we get our groceries. As we are paying the clerk tells us that it is actually only a 5% discount and so we realize that with all that happened we didnt save any money at all by buying our groceries there.
We finally arrived back home at 10:00pm.
We decided its time to buy a cell phone
With all that in mind I tell you this story.
Part 1
Yesterday we had the brilliant idea that instead of catching a ride home with his usual ride I would drive in to the city to pick my husband up after school and then we would go for groceries there and come home.
Sounds simple enough right?. Well because we dont have a cell phone we agreed a time and place to meet and just left it at that. Around 1:00 I noticed that it was snowing a bit so I thought I would head in early in case the roads got bad. By the time I got baby packed up and everything ready to go it was already 2:00 and the weather had turned to blowing snow and fog. I Phoned the cell phone of the guy who my husband was going to school with and asked what the weather was like there and I was told it was fine. I decided to try going anyways because I figured it was probably just happening right around our town. So away we go. Well when we hit the highway the weather was absolutely terrible. I couldnt see anything and I got stuck behind a little old man who was doing 40 km/h. It took me 40 minutes to do a drive that is usually 15 minutes. At that point I decided to head for home and give it a try again a little later in the day. As I was on my way home I was breaking and my breaks started making this terrible grinding noise and my litte green stationwagon started lurching. I made it home safely and immediately called the mechanic. He said to bring it in right away. I called my husbands commuter friend to say I wasnt coming but couldnt get through. I again loaded up the baby and took off to the mechanic. As I pulled in and hit the breaks I just kept going right on by the shop. After I drifted to stop I backed up and eased my way into the shop. Although they were super busy they pulled one of their guys to work on my car and we switched my baby seat into an extra vehicle they had there to give me a ride back home.
Part 2
After a few hours I get a call from the garage. Our conversation goes something like this.
Mechanic: (very condesendingly)um have you driven this car in icy conditions before?
Me: Yes and it hasnt done this before
Mechanic: Well we took your wheels off and there is nothing wrong.
Me: How can there be nothing wrong? It made a really awful sound and the car shuddered.(you know that sound your car makes when you drive over rumble strips just before a stop sign on the hiway. thats what it was like)
Mechanic:That is just the sound of your ABS kicking in. You havent had this car very long have you?
Me: No
Mechanic: well I will bring the car back for you.
Me: (thinking to myself)great they think Im an idiot
Part 3
I get the car back with just enough time to book it to the city and pick up my husband. I will only be about 10 minutes late. I quick reload the car seat and pack up the baby. Away I go again. The roads are clear so I figure its clear sailing from here on in.
I get less than five minutes from my town when a semi drives past me and sprays my winshield with snowy gook. I flip on my wipers only to discover that they arent working. I decide to pull over at the next farm and clean my windshield and fix my wipers. This should make me about 15 minutes late but safety first right. I signal and begin breaking a ways from the driveway I am wanting to turn into. I look in my rearview mirror to see the car behind me quickly approaching and showing no signs of slowing down to avoid me. At the last second I gun it and turn into the drive way being narrowly missed by the before mentioned car. As I rip into the snowy driveway I hit the breaks which lock(Isnt ABS that has nothing wrong with it suppose to prevent your breaks from locking?) and I go sliding into the ditch. Im stuck bad and although I tried to get myself out, my gutless stationwagon is hopeless. I step out into knee deep snow and go to the farm house. Luckily the lady of the farm is home and welcomes me and the baby in. Im now 20 minutes late. She phones her husband at the rental shop he owns (ironically placed next door to my house) and he comes out with a big truck and chains. He kindly gets me out and although I again try to phone my husband on his friends cell phone I still cannot get through. 45 miniutes late.
I again load up the baby and again hit the road. As I am driving the slush of the road and the spray from passing vehicles covers my windshield. Before long I am out of washer fluid. As I am debating on attempting to pull over again and use some baby wipes to clean the windshield, I see a lone country gas station. I pull in and ask for some washer fluid. It appears they are all out. After some looking the teenage girl working the place finds a bottle in the back. I get it filled up and again hit the road. I am now an hour late.
The last of the trip I am tense and frustrated but at least I make it with no more incidents. I pick up my husband and we get our groceries. As we are paying the clerk tells us that it is actually only a 5% discount and so we realize that with all that happened we didnt save any money at all by buying our groceries there.
We finally arrived back home at 10:00pm.
We decided its time to buy a cell phone
posted by Stahled at
12:10 PM
10 Comments:
this post fits quite well with the title of your blog.
Lynette, I be thinkin' you should be trying the Save-On-Foods run on the first Tuesday of each month. They offer 15% to everyone and it includes fluid milk, which the IGA does not (or at least didn't used to, maybe they changed their minds on that). Their prices are conSIDerably lower than in town, produce etc is much nicer, and the savings can easily pay for the gas required to get in if you have a large enough shopping list (which I always make sure I do). Plus you get the points accumulation to redeem stuff if you want (1 pt per 1 dollar spent in addition to the in-store point giveaways too, and it includes gas you buy at their gas bar). One year I got all my extended-family Christmas presents on Save-On points, no one was the wiser, they were really nice gifts. I think I have nearly 90,000 points now, haven't redeemed in some time.
Re the cell phone....I would not be able to function without mine. T and AJ have theirs too, it's a lifesaver some days. Welcome to the world of Finding People Anywhere They Are. You have AMA too, right, for any future Stahls on the Side of the Highway?!
Sucks, what a day!! Yeah those abs brakes, even though I am married to a mechanic I didn't know what the heck they were. When we had our van, I remember trying to stop in winter on ice>> and heard this aweful noise, I told T.>> sounds like I hit a sick moose>> this vehicle needs some serious attention/work >> he said, yep those are abs and sounds like they are working GREAT!!
Cell phone sounds like a great idea, we use pay as you go cards and that works for us, we don't need or use our cell phone much. Be careful of signing up for a plan, sometimes they get you committed for a couple of years and it costs. but yeah.. your little one's first winter>> in her baby book you can write " Mom & S.'s adventure in the snow" you made a memory >>> one day to look back on and laugh about.. maybe :)
I love "Pay as You Go"....I got the phone precisely because I have been stranded on the highway, and I hated it!
What a horrible day! A no good, terrible, awful, horrible day. (Did you ever read that book?)
That's horrible!! Cell phones are wonderful things. Pay as you Go is awesome. I get by on $10 a month, unless I end up downloading ringtones. I'm not sure how much the phone costs to start with (I got mine for my birthday, you'd have to ask my parents), but it's definatley worth it.
Anyway... hope you don't have any more adventures in the snow, or with ABS or washer fluid or...
Shari
Do you realize this may not have happened if we didn't have winter...stupid fall of man...thats right! In the summer, we sit around consuming beer by the fire and enjoy strolls around town...!
Glad you came out of this intact. Let me know who the condesending mechanic was and I'll kick him in the junk and push my finger into his eye.
Go with pay as you go. Get the cheapest phone you can find.
Charmaine and I each have a cell phone... She uses hers to call me on her way home from work to decide what we should have for dinner. I use mine to find out what time it is and look up phone numbers so that I can call people from a land line.
We were stupid and signed up on a three year contract. Got 18 months left to go.
Hey chicky,
Good idea getting a cell phone. Just wanted to let you know that I am in the bloggin world now.
Lets chat.
Dana
Hey Lynette,
Thanks for your sweet and kind remarks. I look forward to being apart of the blogging world too. Soon I will be done work and life will give me more breathing space so I hope to do a few different things now.
One of those things is get together and hang out with you and precious Salem.
Talk to you soon.
Dana
Lynette,
Don't give into the "MAN" first its a cell phone, than a robotic vacuum cleaner. (Acutaly, if you get one then I'll feel like the only one left without one...very selfish I guess).
I blame winter for your adventurous day. (Word to the wise, never trust a mechanic... they're trained to be condensending).
Remember, no cell phone !...
And Shari, I can believe your parents got you a cell phone! Wow, first they get a microwave that doesn't cause a power shortage, then a cell phone...whats next, satalite TV.
WHATS THIS WORLD COMING TOO.
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