{"id":3971,"date":"2014-11-20T12:33:30","date_gmt":"2014-11-20T19:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/?p=3971"},"modified":"2014-11-20T12:33:30","modified_gmt":"2014-11-20T19:33:30","slug":"not-a-total-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/?p=3971","title":{"rendered":"Not a Total Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

You ever have that car?<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>That car with all the bodily fluid stories?!?<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Ewww\u2026that\u2019s grody!<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Why would you even bring that up<\/span>??<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>And no, the term \u201cgrody\u201d never goes out of style.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>And no, don\u2019t even look at ME like that.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>You\u2019re the one who brought up the whole bodily fluids thing.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I?<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>I was simply gonna mention about that car\u2026the car that\u2019s your very first brand spankin\u2019 new car.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>The one you still remember fondly.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>The car that got you through thick and thin and was like a member of the family.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>You ever have one of those?<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>I did.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>I still do.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s going on thirteen years old now and was recently declared a total loss by the insurance company as a result of hail storm damage.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When I got the news, my heart squeezed up.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>My car?<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>A total LOSS?!?<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>But this car is FILLED to the brim with memories; It can\u2019t be a TOTAL loss!<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Admittedly, it\u2019s no longer brand new and sure as heck isn\u2019t spankin\u2019 anything these days, but this was the car we brought a new baby home from the hospital in and then it subsequently held all of the different types of car seats for growing bodies the world has ever seen \u2013 until we got beyond car seats and those once-tiny bodies now sit in the front seat and fiddle with the radio.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

My daughter said her first sentence in this car!<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>(\u201cDoo dees, doo dees,\u201d all while waving her hand reverse-style like the Queen of England in the general direction of the drop-down video screen.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Turns out she was saying, \u201cDo this.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Do this.\u201d while trying to get us to put in a Baby Einstein video for the car ride to daycare.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>We just couldn\u2019t figure it out for a full two weeks because of her Latvian accent.)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

All the lost teeth that car has seen!<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>All the bloody noses.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>All the triumphant sports replays discussed with teammates over Slurpees in the back seat.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Until the red Slurpees got spilled everywhere and certain people banned Slurpees in the back seat.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It even kept us warm and dry during that weird have-to-pee-in-a-bottle-every-time-we\u2019re-in-the-car phase some folks in the family went through.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And speaking of warm and dry\u2026there were all those rainstorms, even that one tornado, tons of snowstorms that we came safely through because of this car.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>In fact, I remember one time driving home in a snowstorm from the Colorado Mountains; the visibility was about as far as my windshield wipers.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>As a result I ended up driving down the middle of two lanes because I couldn\u2019t see the lane markers or anything else.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>I was also hyperventilating because I don\u2019t usually drive in the mountains in the snow because it makes me hyperventilate.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Hubby had come up separately in his car from a business trip, so he was driving his car home while I was driving my car.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>And hyperventilating.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>(Did I already mention about the hyperventilating?<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Seems like I did.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>But it\u2019s important to mention.) <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I had a sorority sister visiting and she was co-pilot.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Sonny and Sissy were in the back seat.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Sonny had spent the whole glamorous Mountain Week-end puking ON Sissy.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>So it came as no surprise that during this night ride home in the snowstorm when the death plummet off the side of the mountain was a very real thing, Sissy developed the throwing up sickness.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>To which I say: thank the Good Lord for sorority sisters willing to man airsick bags which look remarkably like Ziploc freezer bags, gallon-sized.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>And thank the Good Lord as well, for cars that keep these very same bags in stock for just such an occasion.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It was a good car.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>It was also a good bag – one my sorority sister even tried to hold on to, filled with upchuck and zipped up tight, the whole time reiterating its \u201cgood bag\u201d status and how we should \u201ckeep it\u201d in case we needed it again.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>NO!!<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>GET RID OF IT!!!<\/span><\/em>\u00a0 <\/span>Which she eventually did, flinging it out the window where it was promptly caught by an updraft and spun off into the night.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

With all that in mind, you can understand why I experienced such great relief when I found out that if I was willing to take a slightly smaller Total Loss check from the insurance company, I\u00a0could KEEP the car.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>(Which is what I ended up doing because A. I had no other car to drive and B. I of course wanted all those fun memories to live on \u2013 that Ziploc Puke Frisbee story is a total gas, isn\u2019t it?!)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Yay!<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Nuthin\u2019 embarrassing about a car full of memories, a big red \u201cTotaled\u201d stamp on your title and money in the bank.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Huh.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>But now that I think about it, you know what\u2019s weird about all those car memories?!<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>They DO involve an awful lot of bodily fluids, after all.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Hey, Honda!<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>This has got \u201ccommercial\u201d written all over it, don\u2019t you think?!?<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>There appears to be a market for bodily fluid stories pertaining to your Odyssey minivan line.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>So call me.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>We need to talk.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Ziploc, you too.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You ever have that car?\u00a0 That car with all the bodily fluid stories?!?\u00a0 Ewww\u2026that\u2019s grody!\u00a0 Why would you even bring that up??\u00a0 And no, the term \u201cgrody\u201d never goes out of style.\u00a0 And no, don\u2019t even look at ME like that.\u00a0 You\u2019re the one who brought up the whole bodily fluids thing. I?\u00a0 I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[313,312,309,153,311,310,308],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3971"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3971"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3976,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3971\/revisions\/3976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}