April 22nd - Lug nuts "What lug nuts?"

Somehow I thought that I wasn’t going to have anything to talk about this week but that was fixed in a hurry. I took Penni’s van into get the brakes fixed last Thursday. My mom works at Mesa High School and they have an auto shop. People can take their cars in to have the students work on them, of course the teachers look over everything. They did a lot of work on my purple truck and fixed some problems that other shops were unable to do. All I have to do is buy the parts and give them soda and pizza for labor. Given Penni’s disdain for spending money on car repairs I think it is a great deal.

So I buy the brake pads, brake cleaner, Dr. Pepper and pizza. I take the van in and they take two days to fix it. I carpooled with my mom so that Penni was not inconvenienced. So far so good. I pick the van up Thursday night and then planned on going to the girls’ softball game. Penni calls and my truck is out of gas and she needs me to fill it up. I have a gas card so that is OK. I switch cars with her and she goes to pick up Nichole and Kristine, then we will meet up at the softball game. Zoe and I go get a quick bit to eat and my cell goes off. Penni’s saying “there is something wrong with this van”. My first reaction is to say just keep driven and turn up the radio but I know that just won’t do. So I meet her at dance to fix the problem. I drive it and there is a problem so we all go to the game in my truck. Then I have Penni drop me off so that I can take care of the van. Penni has said that I throw her under the bus in some :of my stories so I will forgo some of the things that are said and my feeling as she pulls away. At 8:00 pm I jump in the van and head to my office which is about 1 mile away. Then at 10pm I decide to go home and plan to pull the tire off and see what’s going on. I am driving home and it quickly becomes clear that I am not going to make it all the way home. The problem is getting worst, so I head to my parents house which is about 3 miles away. Then as I am driving the back end of the van drops – there is a huge thud and I know that the tire came off. I pull over and my luck is the fact that the axle is resting on the rim of the tire and there is not much damage. This could have been a lot worst. I will try to speed it up. The tow truck comes and I tow it to my parents house and then I slid into bed at 3:00am. The next morning my mom goes into the auto shop and asks for my lug nuts, they basically look at her like she is stupid. They say that the lug nuts are on the car, she says no they are not and then all their faces go white. Basically they hand tightened the lug nuts on the rear tires thinking that they will do all four tires the next day. The other teacher decided that they were only going to do the front brakes so the rear tire never got tightened. They felt bad and have done everything possible to fix it. I had it towed back to the shop and one of the parts will be here tomorrow and then it should be. So much for get’ in something for nothing.