creampuff continued

Did you read part 1?

Naturally, my children were riding up there in the Westy, with the stranger on our way to the bank.

Poor stranger. 

We were in a bit of a precarious place between the right lane of the freeway and the left lane of the exit. I told the kids to stay in the Westy while we figured out our next move.  Bill and the stranger and I peered down at the back where the smoke continued to trickle out. Poor stranger. She was a bit red in the face, assuring us that this has never happened before and she just had it checked out that very morning! 

I suggested that we drive to a safer place, maybe to the very place that had checked it that morning, but she was hesitant to drive it if something was wrong, she wanted to call her mom for AAA numbers and have someone come and tow it.  

The poor stranger smiles through her angst

We were all pretty unsure about what to do, this was unprecedented. The only obvious course of action was immediately clear to me. I said to Bill: “I’m going to call Ellie.”

That was a funny conversation. Ellie listened and immediately diagnosed exactly what turned out to be the problem, then asked what we had decided to do in the end. I clarified: “We are literally sitting on the side of the freeway.” We cracked up, this was not me filling her in on what had happened, this was me dragging her directly into what was happening. Meanwhile, Bill was frowning mightily at me from behind the poor Westy. I took a photo, but I don’t know what happened to it. Perhaps the death rays he was shooting at me from his eyeballs melted the image. In any case, I jogged back up to the Westy and asked the Poor Stranger if this had ever happened after an oil change, because Ellie and Bill both immediately predicted that there was too much oil put into the Westy’s fwagile wittle tank.  Poor Stranger was beyond wondering, though. She had help on the way. We whisked these sad sacks

angst, jr.

back into our boring old SUV and wished the Poor Stranger good luck with her the our? Poor Westy. She promised not to sell it to anyone else, and that she’d call me as soon as she knew anything.

She called a few hours later, I missed her call because I was at the Pumpkin Patch until 7pm on October 30 because I am a GOOD MOM, dammit.

“Great news!” She said. “I had it towed to a mechanic who discovered that there was about two quarts too much oil in the tank! He flushed it and refilled it and wrote you a note that there was no harm done!”

Back in business, baby!

We spoke a few minutes later, and agreed that she would text me when she was leaving LA the following day and we would work out a time to meet on Monday after the bank opened. 

Sunday was a blur of pumpkin guts, candy, vodka, candy, football, candy, sunshine, and candy.  With a little teeny mix of buyer’s skepticism. I kept texting Ellie for reassurance, which she doled out in spades. 

On Monday morning, I noted that the Stranger had not yet texted to alert me about when she’d be back in town.  Hmmmm. 

On Monday afternoon, I told Ellie that I hadn’t heard from her since Saturday evening when I was at the pumpkin patch. She replied: “Dude, whattup wit dat?” I started to sweat. Turns out that nothing cancels out buyer’s remorse faster that the possibility that the deal will fall through. Where was our Stranger???? I texted. I called and left voicemail. I emailed. I fretted. 

At exactly 2:57 pm, my phone commenced to chirping. Texts, emails, missed phone calls. My Stranger! 

“sorry, just turned on my dead phone. Everything is still on track.”

“omg, I was starting to have a stroke about what I’d tell my kids if this fell through.”

But it did not fall through.

jiggety jig!

And really, the only proper way to celebrate the fact that we woke up the next morning with Our Creampuff in the driveway was to have ourselves a Westy Waffle party.

Can you feel the Westy Love?

I love self timers. we should do a whole post featuring the messed up self timer photos you get before the keeper. In this case, we settled. We were late.

The beast LOVES our Westy. Wait til she finds out it's mobile!