Monday, May 22, 2017

An Unexpected Date

Bob and I tend to hang onto things.  We've had out Honda for 17 years and it recently turned over 200,000 miles.  Although it was running just fine, we took it in just to have an allover checkup and tuneup.  It was a bit pricey--a lot of the seals were wearing out, the timing belt needed to be replace, odds and ends.  But worth it, because it's a perfect car for us.

You know that old saying--if it ain't broke, don't fix it?  A week later we're driving and smell that hot oil smell and it's smoking under the hood--and dripping oil underneath.

Nuisance and bother--have to take it to the shop again.  We took the other car so we wouldn't have to wait at the Honda place, but it didn't seem worth the driving to go home and then turn around and come back in to pick the car up (it's a 30+ mile round trip).

It was still early and we hadn't had breakfast, so we went to the coffee shop at the grocery story--and that's where the date began.  After the busyness of the last few weeks, we suddenly had enforced idleness.  There was a Scrabble board there, and next thing we knew we had played for 3 hours!  We did a bit of grocery shopping after that, and pizza for lunch at a new pizza place with wood-fired ovens (crispy crust).

We could have been angry, or frustrated, at their mistake in the first place (turns out that a gasket had gotten pinched when they installed the oil pan, hence the leak) but somehow we had been given the gift of a few hours just to enjoy each other's company.

We've been together for 45 years now--but it's still nice to have a date from time to time.

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