rrRRrrrrrr

Got in the car this morning to the sight of: you guessed it! the "check engine" light and the little red triangle-and-exclamation-point warning sign.

(You'd think, since the display is a freaking touchscreen computer, that they could display some vaguely useful information. I'm not even asking for sophisticated analysis here; just the name of the system that triggered the warning. Fuel? Air intake? Carburetor?)

Well, that's annoying, I thought. But easy enough to deal with. I'll take the kids to school and make another appointment to bring the car to the shop.

I backed out of the driveway, then put the car in Drive and stepped on the gas. rrRRrrrrrr, said the car. It lurched into motion, but then refused to speed up past 3mph.

Um.

I checked to make sure I was in the right gear, stepped on the gas again. rrrrrr, said the car, and we made it up to 5mph.

This... was not good.

Maybe the engine just needs to warm up a bit, I thought. I drove to the end of the street, and the car made it up to 10mph. An improvement! I stepped on the gas a bit harder, and the car... slowed down.

I drove around the block that's situated at the end of our cul-de-sac. Not once did I get the car over 15mph. But it was slowly improving. I decided to drive aimlessly around the neighborhood a little longer and see what happened. Every time I tried to accelerate quickly, the car slowed down, as if it was doing the reverse of what I wanted it to. I turned down the street perpendicular to ours. The one with the big dip and hill.

Going up the hill, the car slowed down again. The emergency brake light came on, though I hadn't actually touched the brake. I set the brake and released it, but the light stayed on, and the car pulled to a standstill. Then it started to drift backwards down the hill.

It handled like a car that wasn't turned on, but I managed to wrestle the wheel around so that it at least backed sideways. My dashboard display was starting to look a little weak, like its battery was dying. I turned the car off, whispered, "Come on, baby," and turned it back on.

The dash display was bright and shiny again. I hit the gas, and the car lurched twice, then started to drive almost normally. A tad sluggish, but I made it up to 25mph before I got to the end of the street.

I drove around the block again, just to test. Managed to get up to 35 without any problems.

Okay. Now what?

I headed toward Alex's daycare, thinking furiously. Halfway there, I called Matt. "Car's busted again," I told him. "Can you meet me at the Toyota place and take Penny to school, please?"

I got Alex to school and took Penny to the Toyota shop. Matt showed up while they were getting me checked in. He's in the middle of a bignasty mess at work, so I told him not to wait for me -- get Penny to school and get on back to work. About ten minutes later, when they'd finished checking me in, the shuttle pulled around and took me to work. I wound up only about ten minutes later than usual, so it's not so bad.

But for petesake, I'd like things to work correctly for a while after this, 'kay? And also, it wouldn't hurt my feelings if spring would actually show up.

---

And just so this isn't entirely bitching and whining -- Alex was so damned adorable last night I could've eaten him up with a spoon.

We were sitting on the floor in my bedroom, playing while Penny was in the bath, and he was poking at various parts of my face and I was naming them: Nose. Eye. Cheek. Eyebrow. Nose. Chin. Nose. Forehead. Eye. Eye. Eyebrow. Nose. Like that.

I usually take my glasses off for this game, because he does make a distinction between my eyes and my glasses, and if I'm wearing the glasses, I can't tell what he's pointing at. (And yes, he really does include the glasses as a valid part of my face -- even after I take them off, he'll occasionally point at them instead of my face.)

Since my glasses were off, I leaned in close and gave him an "eyelash kiss" -- fluttering my eyelashes against his cheek. He giggled, so I did it again.

He laughed, then looked up at me and -- quite deliberately -- blinked his eyes several times, fairly quickly. I laughed and gave him another eyelash kiss. He giggled and blink-blinked at me again. That went back and forth several times, and it was utterly adorable.

(Of course, there's too much of a good thing... A few minutes later, he picked up one of his mega-lego blocks and smooshed it into my eyeball so I could give it an eyelash kiss, too...)