Sunday, January 13, 2008

Out of gas...literally

The morning started out okay...Ethan had to get up early to save lives (donate blood), but the boys slept past 7, so it wasn't too bad. Bowls of cereal for everybody and then some good old Disney Channel so I could take a shower in peace (sort of). Blood donation took longer than expected, so there was no time for pancakes AND church, and I let Evan make the choice (church is important, but so is family time). I have to say, I was surprised that he decided on church, but it was a pleasant surprise, so we went on our way. Halfway there, I noticed 2 things:
  1. I had not brought Evan's Bible storybook
  2. My gas light was on
I debated about turning around (because of #1, it's only 3 miles roundtrip to church), but decided to roll the dice and see if Evan could be reasonably well-behaved with no distractions. We got there early enough to get a seat up front next to the 'band', which always helps. We could have used the distractions. He was up, down, talking, repeating things in a very loud voice, crouching over so his underwear was hanging out. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't good either. And there were no popular songs today, but he did perform a lovely little dance during the last song instead.

So back into the truck, and we head home. I barely get out of the church parking lot and notice I have lost the ability to accelerate. It took a few seconds to process what the problem was, and I tried switching to the manual mode to see if that will at least get me out of the way of everyone else who is trying to leave church behind me. Manual doesn't help, but there is the tiniest bit of a slope and I am able to pull into a cul-de-sac using a lot of muscle since there's no power steering without gas. And we call home.

Me: You need to come get us, I'm out of gas.

Ethan: Oh crap.

Ethan and Eric show up 20 minutes later with a container of gas and we all head home. There is a brief 'discussion' over who's fault it is that I ran out of gas. Ethan was driving the truck last night, I told him before we left that I would need gas, but both of us forgot on the way home. And supposedly the light never came on to say it was running low, even though I have seen the light at least twice, but that doesn't help my case because it just goes to show I make a habit of letting the gas in my truck get low--so much of a habit that Ethan calls it my security system because if some dumb fool did steal my truck, they wouldn't be able to get too far. But I would like to say that I HAVE NEVER RUN OUT OF GAS BEFORE TODAY. So I need to blame this on Ethan to keep my un-tarnished record intact.

Update: Ethan has begrudgingly agreed to take the blame so my record stays clean. And then he took my truck to fill it up with the gas, which means he knows it was his fault, but in order to keep his manliness, he can't just admit it ;-)

3 comments:

  1. You can blame it on us living in the boonies and we are sorry. Glad everyone is OK :)

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  2. I would blame it on Doug - he REALLY wanted that house out in the boonies.
    But - I think most of us have done that before!
    and at least you were close to home and Ethan was home....my luck I would be far far away from anyone who could help me out and John would be unreachable!

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  3. It seems to be happening a lot lately, I ran out of gas the first time last week, luckily I was at Dad's when it happened, so I didn't get stranded!

    And it was totally my fault...

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