I’ve been MIA lately. Hubby has had a bad scare with his kidneys, out of the blue, and ended up hospitalised for a week. We still don’t know what happened to cause the injury to his kidneys, and he isn’t out of the woods yet – but is improving – albeit slowly.

It’s been scary – he is only 42 – and being in the hospital here isn’t fun. Not that it is fun anywhere, ever. I’ll just say that the nurses are fantastic, the doctors not so much.

We’ll know more next Wednesday.

In other news, our 2003 Mini (with over 140,000 miles) has now developed a new problem, which I think is a dead alternator. Two short trips, turning off the engine each time, and the third ended with click-click-click when turning the key. A new battery died immediately after another short trip, and then a longish drive to charge it up had the headlights dying, the wipers stopping mid-wipe, and the radio turning itself off. Has to be the alternator.

Poor iDJ was the one behind the wheel for all this, too. He’s barely been out of the house for a week, and this was his first time in the car by himself in two weeks, and this shit piles on his head. 

I had this same thing happen to me in the early 90’s (maybe actually in 1990) when I was hundreds of miles away from home trying to make money for my family doing a shitty jewlery sales job and driving my 1979 Datsun 210B station wagon. A dead alternator kills your car. I bought a newish one and installed it myself. No google back then, either. 

I have to go to work on Monday, and we need to go food shopping tomorrow – with no car. I really wish we had something like that old Datsun so I could make it all better with scrapyard parts, but a Mini engine compartment is so crammed with gear there isn’t any room to work. Not to mention all the computerised everything.

I guess I’m officially old when I remember the days we could fix our cars ourselves. Even when being a female with very very limited tools.

A post from me isn’t a post without a photo – so here is our first snow of winter 2015.

  
Isn’t it pretty? Do you see the whirlwind circle like I do?