Ford Flex Fridays - A New Mission Impossible... or IS it?

I'm on a mission this summer. I need a new car! I figured I could sell everything I own for a new car, sell the crappy 2001 Honda Odyssey and take whatever is left over and plunk it down on another "Best Selling" clunker, or..... I could get creative!

I'm one of those who are extremely desperate during these trying economic times. I am SO sure that celebrities like Ellen Degeneres are tired of seeing my name crop up on their car giveaways that when it does show up, it's an automatic "DELETE".

I actually Googled **New Car Giveaways** this morning in hopes of entering every single one of them and winning one of those suckers that can fit all my kids, me, and a future dog! There are like, a ba-zillion of them since the beginning of the year. I couldn't list them all according to Google's Timeline; therefore, I don't have time to spend 23 hours a day signing up for these things and having massive spam email show up as a result.

"NO! I do NOT need car parts for a 1980 AMC Pacer, Thank You Very Much!"

So I decided to think *Out Of The Box*. Which seems a far stretch for me, I know, but it does happen on a rare occasion when all the kids are in school and I'm on one of my Just Turned Spring, - 3 mile walks that clears my head of all the winter cobwebs and I realize that the sky IS STILL blue.

My goal here is to blog about all the Pros and Cons (if any that I can find), of the new Ford Flex. It is THAT car that God wrote the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Covet" for. I am coveting this sucker all over the interstate, highways, and bi-ways, and when a neighbor zooms by my house in one of them.

It IS the coolest crossover made yet with it's retro, yet clearly defined modern design (oh God, that sounded sooo like a stupid commercial, LOL)! Even Nia says "Ooooooh!" when one passes. It is a must have in my book and in my garage!

So every week on Fridays, I am declaring it FORD FLEX FRIDAY'S! On this day, you will read a post about a specific topic on the Ford Flex: it's design, reviews, reliability, performance, how happy it makes mommies and families (cause we know that IS the most important topic). It will include videos and, hopefully, a local dealership who will join me for "the ride"!

The ultimate goal: to appeal to the Ford Flex God(s) so that they will see my real need for this car, help me give my Honda Odyssey a proper burial (like burning it on the dealership lot as a sacrificial offering to them), and give me a..... uh..... FREE Ford Flex?

Is it an Mission Impossible task? Hell, I don't know, but one does have to try!

As a legal disclaimer, I must tell you that Ford™, and anyone else affiliated with them or their company(s), have no stinking clue that I'm doing this.

Therefore, I'm not getting paid to do diddly-squat!

This idea totally popped in my head this morning as I was on my walk, and thought,

"What could it hurt?"

If they don't give me one, well then.... you and I can laugh about another one of my intense obsessions and how I may have to wait till the Odyssey's automatic doors simply fall off while driving to the beach and I have to start an "I Hate Honda Odyssey" blog.

Let's just hope that Ford notices me and sees my need to stuff me, my four kids, and future dog, into one of their cars before that happens!

Be forewarned! There will be a petition you will be forced begged to sign as this process goes along. Please feel free to cheer me on, call me crazy, or offer any suggestions/comments toward the process or the car.

I may have just started a new revolution!

FLEX - ON!

Tell Me Again Why I Don't Like Mondays

You know it's gonna be a funky day when you wake up late, it's raining, and the car needs to go in the shop. In other words.... it's a Monday.

The infamous Honda Odyssey has to go in for a timing belt replacement before I'm left with a blown engine and thousands of dollars of more repairs on this hunk of junk. This means 6 family members have the use of a BMW meant for a midget. It only seats four so picking up and dropping off kids at school and Pre-K has to be cleverly maneuvered; i.e., USE THE FREAKING BUS - which they totally loath because they say it "smells funny".

So the hubs sets off at 6:30 to drop the van off so that it can be the first one worked on, only to find out when he gets there that he is already sixth in line and the car won't be ready until today.

Great! Two days of stuffing whining, sweaty bodies into the BMW. The week is off to a great start already.

I get the first three kids off to school without much conflict, but then Nia decides she wants to wear her bathing suit with her new skirt and her hot pink boots that are meant for weather. Now normally I just go with her gut, but not today, and NOT this outfit.

I spend the better part of 45 minutes begging, pleading, whining, being firm, back to begging, bribing occasionally, and then finally deciding not to talk to her at all until she resolves to give up the bathing suit, put on a shirt, and wear socks with the boots if she's gonna wear them.

She shows up in my room 10 minutes later dressed, but with tennis shoes on this time. I should have just figured out with all my motherly wisdom, to just leave her alone in the first place and she'd come to her own senses.

But NoooOOOooo! I gotta do it the hard way. I need a Dr. Phil intervention here cause we are not 1/2 hour late for school and the hubs is calling nonstop wanting to know WHEN I'm leaving the house and picking him up because he has waited SO long for me so far that he started walking and now he's walking in the pouring rain.

And I'm at fault for this decision??????

I drop Nia off feeling sorry for her cause her little face is still red from crying about the whole swimsuit couture for class thing. As soon as I get back into the BMW, it won't start. I crank, and crank, and crank, and crank, and all the while I do, it's saying "screw you - I ain't starting!".

I do the usual looking around to see if anyone is noticing that my car is being as stubborn as Nia was this morning. I expect tantrums from my kids, but not our car - or should I say the hubs car, which it is, and which it takes on the same personality as he does at times.

So I start talking to it and soothing it and telling it I promise I'll make the hubs take better care of it. I am actually stroking the dashboard and again looking around to see if anyone is watching. It's pouring the rain - who is going to be standing outside at this moment watching me stroke the dashboard of an archaic BMW? But I still gotta look!

Finally she starts, and finally I'm on my way to pick up the hubs who is now walking to the animal shelter to see about getting Remi neutured now that he has agreed to having the cats nuts severed so that he will stop the horrid howling he does in the house at night.

I'm driving over the 3-mile bridge into Pensacola and I have forgotten that the car needs new front shocks until the front starts rocking up and down and I nearly lose my breakfast in the floorboard from it. Now I don't get seasick, and this just might be the first time I've actually gotten car sick cause the front of the car is resembling "the wave" in a baseball stadium as it goes UP and down, UP and down, and my stomach goes, UGH and burb, UGH and burb! I have never been so happy to get off a bridge in all my life.

I finally get to my destination only to see that the hubs is walking again to the end of the road where I'm suppose to pick him up at the animal shelter. As he enters the car, he smells like he has just walked the Sahara from end to end. The interior of the BMW is very small, and his intense sweaty body odor permeates what little space I have to breathe in in this car so fast that I exit as quick as I can in order not to die from the noxious fumes he is emitting.

"What's wrong?", he asks with a slightly annoyed look (who can blame him - he's been walking in the rain for an hour).

"Oh my God you need to go home and take a shower!", I say between gasps of fresh air and rain pouring on my head. My God! A carload of elephant farts would have smelled better than that man did!

We both laugh as I get back in the car, roll the window down enough not to let the monsoon rains in, but just enough so that I can breathe - not just from his odor, but from the eventual trip back over the 3-mile bridge.

The rest of the day (the next 1 1/2 hours), goes pretty much okay. I leave to pick up Nia from school at 1 and as I'm walking her to the car I ask her, "How was lunch today?".

"I didn't have any.", she replies looking at the ground.

I pause for a few seconds and then realize I sent my daughter to Pre-K without her lunch. You may not think this is a big deal, but she goes to a Pre-K that doesn't serve her lunch there. So my daughter sat there while everyone else ate and she didn't.

I am a very, very, very bad mommie on this Monday.

So I took her home and made her whatever she wanted. She had a Nutella sandwich first, a quesadilla second, a bowl of peaches third, a bowl of broccoli last; and then she topped it all off with a bowl Peanut Butter Cup ice cream from Ben and Jerry's.

It was not what I'd normally serve her, or in that order, but rather it was a guilt lunch so that my daughter wouldn't see me as the sorry excuse for a mom she would later come to recognize when she hit her teen years!

Then..... No, my day isn't over my any means at this point.

I have a meeting with Toni's teacher today, but before I go, I want to get the shelves up in Julian and Nia's room before we go. Everything is fine and dandy until we are on the last damn screw in Nia's room. The hubs ask me to pick up the drill from the floor while he holds the screw in place. I pick it up and then Nia flies into the room and yells "Whatcha Dooooin!"

I drop the drill on my foot. It doesn't just "drop" on my foot - it falls straight down so that the phillip's shaped drill bit lands right between my 2nd and middle toe on my right foot and lodges itself there somewhere between muscle and bone, and cutting a slit in my shoe in the process. YES I was wearing shoes and STILL managed to do this! I am left with a "X" marks the spot on my foot and toes swellling all over the place and blood spurting through this little mark on my foot now.

As I lay on Nia's bed screaming into a pillow, the hubs eloquently remarks that I gave birth to four children naturally, this pain should be nothing compared to that. If I had had a shoe, or anything to fling at him, it would be landing up the side of his head at that moment. I just let out another agonizing moan into the pillow instead as Nia is stroking my head telling me I'll be okay.

I eventually clean it up, slap a few bandaids on it, and get myself composed for the meeting with the teacher. But not before thinking, "Hmmmm.... maybe I should visit my friends in the ER since I haven't paid them a visit THIS month like have the past TWO months? I think I am due for a tetanus shot since I haven't had one since, like 1980 after 28 stitches from a car accident!"

But then I snap out of it and go on with this Monday that I have been given and want to give back to whoever will take it.

Now I have to juggle taking the hubs to work and meeting Toni's 3rd grade teacher for a meeting about her not handing in her homework of late. My God! A little over three weeks into school and I'm already being dragged in for a parent/teacher conference. I get Nia ready to go again, and she would rather take a nap, so it takes some more prodding and bribing to get her back into the car again. We drop the hubs off, but not before noticing that the oil light in the BMW is coming on and he has to drive to three different places to find a quart of oil to put in the car because he "forgot" to do so the other day.

We get to the school and wind our way around the sea of cars already lining up to pick up their bundle(s) of joy amongst the torrential rains unleash itself on Nia and I through the half busted umbrella the hubs offered us because I was still in "bad mommie mode", and walked off without one when we left the house.

I arrive to Toni's teachers room wet and cold. I instructed Nia and Toni to sit outside the door and gave them the iPhone in which to busy themselves with a few appropriate games like "Pocket God". The teacher and I sit ourselves at these chairs meant only for 3rd graders and which we look completely ridiculous sitting on ourselves.

She begins to explain to me about how Toni isn't finishing her work, handing it in, zoning out, being unorganized, and I'm responding that this is the first time I've heard of her doing this. She responds that she has call ALL of her past teachers and they all have noticed the same thing (Huh?), and bottom line.... Toni has ADD.

"Excuse Me!"

She explains that Toni needs to be tested for ADD as soon as possible and put on the appropriate "medication(s)", because she is in jeopardy of falling behind because she may have to repeat 3rd grade like she did 1st.....

"Wait! She NEVER repeated 1st grade!", I tell her teacher.

"She didn't?", her teacher replies with a very puzzled look on her face that let's me know that someone informed her that she had.

"But...... we think Toni is gifted because her reading level is so far ahead of the rest of the students.", she continues.

Well! At least some good news came out of this meeting so that I don't have to go home and cry in my pillow because the whole stinking school system NOW thinks my child is... is..... de - fect - tive!

Then I realized after the meeting that my child IS NOT defective. She is hardwired differently and thus does not learn the way the public school system thinks/says she should learn because that's the only way they know how to teach her - only if she learns her academics within the frame they are use to "dealing" with.

I am very clear about my feelings toward the treatment(s) of ADD and ADHD. I will not be "medicating" Toni with psychotropic drugs so that she can fit into a square box when she in fact, is not "square". She is a round peg that needs to have the tools at her disposal in order to work within square peg school system. I respond to this "diagnosis" of ADD like I did when I was told the twins would "very likely" have asthma by the time they were three because of the medication I was given for their lungs while in the hospital with pre-term labor. They are almost 12 and have never been "medicated" for asthma because they never got asthma, and they was because we were proactive in the way we fed them and what we exposed them to at an early age. Toni is no different in our approach and she will not be a Ridelin or Strattera child.

And that was my soap-box moment in all this.

When I get home, I go into research mode. So much so that I forget to take Nadia to volleyball practice and she has to remind me three minutes before she has to be there. I take her, come back, then resume researching ADD again. Then I forget to start dinner and don't realize it until I'm aware that I have to pick Nadia up, then pick the hubs up, then come home and make dinner at a time when everyone is expecting TO BE ON THE TABLE ALREADY!

So I toss the chicken into the microwave and punch "defrost" as I'm headed out the door with Nia in tow to pick up the rest of the family. Nadia is 15 minutes late getting out of volleyball which makes me 15 minutes late picking the hubs up, which makes dinner 15 minutes later still.

After hobbling around the kitchen on 1 1/2 feet, we eventually eat at, 7:30 and that's 1 hour before Toni and Nia go to bed. I resolve to let them stay up a little later so that they won't have nightmares from eating so close to bedtime, and while I am cleaning up the dishes, I get a little, itty-bitty sliver of glass stuck in the bottom of my foot from Chowder knocking my pie plate into the floor the other day and whoever swept and vacuumed, missed, that one little piece that HAS to end up in my foot after a day like this!

I announce to the family that I officially give up for that day. I'm taking a bath in order to dig and prod the glass out of my foot, soak the already injured one, and try to gain some sort of sanity before I have to wrestle kids into bed. I leave the kitchen cleaning to whomever volunteers for it.

Did I mention that the kids are still doing homework by the time I get out of the tub at 8:15? After assisting them with their homework, allowing a little extra stay-up time, everyone is finally in bed and partially conked out by 10 pm. I was in a coma by 10:45.

The hubs let me sleep in this morning and opted to get up at 5:30 to get the kids ready for school.

THANK YOU!!!

I finally awoke this morning to a very cranky four year old who was insistent that she was NOT going to school today. Yep - she went to bed too late last night. After a few minutes of begging, prodding, bribing, and having a general deja-vu moment this morning, I felt it just wasn't worth it and let her stay at home instead.

She fell asleep on my bed soon after that decision and she has been asleep the whole time it has taken me to write this post.

Regardless of my to-do list today, I think I'll follow her que and sit back and chill today. It's been pretty chaotic since school started, but sometimes you just can't fight a bodies natural primal scream to sit down, shut up, relax, and stay away from drills!

That is until all the kids come home from school in about.... three hours!

WARNING: Migraines and Lost Keys DO NOT mix!

So I'm here to ask you..... How did you freaking week go? Well mine started off relatively.... GREAT, then started into an uncontrollable downward spiral!

BUT WARNING: I want to tell you that this is long one folks, so go get the baristas from Starbucks and bring them into your computer room, grab that stash of Swiss Rolls or the doughnuts you've been avoiding lately, and pull up a comfy chair and plan to be here longer than the five minutes it takes you to read through one of these compositions.

Last Saturday, Nadia and I went to the spa, and she got her first manicure and pedicure, complete with a foot and leg massage. I received a wonderful facial along with a foot and leg massage and a pedicure as well. It was a lovely gift given to me by my husband for all the hard work put in raising the kids and cooking his gourmet dishes every night. It was one of the best mother/daughter days I have spent with her in a long time and she proudly displayed her nails to all her friends that weekend. A real bonding moment for the two of us.

"Get to the good stuff!", you say! Hold your panties on cause I'm getting there!

All last weekend went well. We went to the beach, had lot's of fun, had fish and chips at Flounders Restaurant on the beach (which I highly recommend frequenting if you're ever in the Pensacola Beach area), and my kitchen remodeling was coming along fine and dandy. We ended by taking the kids to the movies on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

It was a damn fine weekend and we all had lot's of fun.

That's the problem.... our family had acquired TOO much fun in the debit department of the Universe Savings and Loan.

But everything that is yin must have a yang, and life is absolutely no exception. Well, somewhere along Monday or Tuesday, the universe had just decided that we/I had hit our "fun" quota for the month and the scales had to be balanced. My God! I never knew we had racked up so many stinking debits in the good times department.

Let me tell you something - it is HELL when it comes to paying back the Universe Savings and Loan Department!

I was eagerly awaiting yesterday as it would be the first time that I would meet my blogging buddy from If Mom Says Okay; Tara. We were taking a photography class together at the local zoo here and I was more excited than I was about getting my first facial last Saturday.

Okay, it was my first facial I've ever had and I promise from now on that I will make it a regular item in my "must do's for women" list. So stop with the dropped jaw syndrome already.

My painting had slowed a little bit due to the mounting paperwork I had to do for my husband and the 9 million vendors I had to make calls for to set up new accounts. No really, there 3 1/2 pages of companies I had to call to request info, then fill out new account forms, send in a copy of licenses, and yada yada yada!

The fatigue started setting in and IT DID NOT HELP that the monthly curse had bored its way down upon me at this time.

By Tuesday afternoon I literally felt like a 3000 lb., elephant was sitting on me wherever I went. By that night, the damn migraine set in.

"Oh yes sister, I know where you're coming from!", I can hear a thousand of you saying, cause those of you who have migraines know one minute everything is fine and dandy, and the next you are clawing the new paint/wallpaper off your bedroom walls while your head is spinning in circles like a Satan infested child from the The Exorcist! The green shit spewing from the mouth can be optional.

Oh Dear God - the BIRD! How could I forget about the Lovebird in this saga. Tuesday afternoon I was cleaning out the bird cage of the Lovebirds that belong to my husband, but he constantly has amnesia in the cage cleaning department. I didn't "secure" the cage effectively while cleaning the cage, and Jo-Jo, the female flew the coop into the great beyond leaving Neo, the male sitting all alone and distraught. I spent the rest of the day listening to my husband whine and mope about HIS lost bird.

"Sorry honey, I guess all the poop and old birdseed dripping down my leg as I dismantled the bottom of the cage overrode the common sense to secure it!", I snapped back at him as my migraine started to really kick in.

Frankly, Jo-Jo was a pretty nasty bird to live with considering she was constantly beating up on Neo, pulling his feathers out, and being an all-around attention diva in the cage. Neo has been acting much happier since she's left for seedier bird feeders.

I spent the latter part of Tuesday evening and night making mock Lovebird calls in the backyard while the neighbors contemplated calling the psycho ward just to shut up my perpetual tweeting in the back yard. Now my lips hurt along with my head!

By Wednesday, I had become that Satan infested child, and this is where the rest of the week went completely downhill into a muck infested cesspool called life.

I was wallowing around on my bed covering my exploding head with a heating pad. I was chanting/swearing/screaming in Latin-laden Satanic mantras which is completely perplexing to me since I have never taken a word of Latin in my entire life!

My four year old now knows another language to use around the house besides Spanish and Chinese - Nickelodeon Style!

You can imagine what I was like by Thursday night; a painful, crying, blubbering, drooling, babbling, whining, screaming mess! My twins were taking turns giving me a back rub while I tried to hum Puff The Magic Dragon to make the pain go away.

I'm delirious, okay!

My head felt like three ice picks had been shoved in it (one of which is in my ear), a series of grenades were going off as well, and that same 3000 lb., elephant still sitting on top of my head.

My husband comes in to take over rubbing my back and asks five different times what I wanted to do, to which I reply five different times that I want to go to the hospital. Apparently he had ear plugs or something in his ears those first four times he asked cause he never heard me until I literally screamed at him that I wanted to go the the ER - NOW, then proceed to roll off the bed and land on the floor to get ready to go while chastising him for sitting on the XBox while I'm rolling in agony in the bedroom.

Since we have four kids and SOMEONE had to stay behind and watch them, I was left to drive myself along with my son Julian to the ER for ANYTHING to kill the searing, burning pain in my head.

I drove no faster than 20 miles an hour for the five mile trip to the ER. The traffic just loved me that night, but I was deathly afraid of running into a tree with my son in the car. "Get a migraine - maim your son in an accident in the process!", I'm thinking to myself.

Now how many of us hate ER's? Come on, raise your hands now cause we KNOW you just love waiting 3-6 hours when you are dying on the ER floor while that helpful hospital staff politely step over you cause IT'S NOT TIME TO CALL YOUR STINKING NAME YET!

I get in there at 9:04 p.m., and it takes them 30 minutes before they call my name to even register me. There are only 15 other people in the waiting room; why the hell is it taking 30 minutes just to take my blood pressure and stab a thermometer in my mouth for 10 seconds?

I'm rocking back and forth, holding my head while everyone else looks at me like I'm a mental case. My son does the only thing he knows to help: rubs my back and holds my hand.

They still look at me like I'm a mental case.

Finally I get called back to run vitals and copy my insurance card. Let's not forget the most important part of the visit - HOW YOUR GONNA PAY FOR ENDING YOUR PAIN! Luckily, they have 95% of my personal info already since my last visit when Nia had to get stitches for sofa surfing. But they are kind enough to put me in a wheelchair since I nearly passed out cold on the floor.

Then comes the major wait. One hour later they finally call me back to my own little room in the ER which I promptly climb up on the bed and assume my previous position of curling up in a ball on my hands and knees, stuffing a pillow into my face, and rocking like...... a mental case. But the nurse was kind enough to bring hot blankets to cover me in a sub-zero ER room.

I told Julian NO photos of this moment as he reached for my iPhone from my purse!

Apparently, he was too tired to listen.

I waited..... and waited..... and waited..... the Rapture came....... and waited...... and waited...... and hell froze over....... and waited...... and waited....... and the Second Coming was about to begin, but then the doctor showed.

I explained the whole migraine symptom thing that had been going on for the past two years. Yes! I've been dealing with this for two years and am now just going to a doctor for it. Let's just call it denial and get it over with.

"You are having grand maul migraines.", he announces. Great! Now that I've got his expertise opinion of what I already know to be true, just give me the stinking pain killers and let's get this over with so I can continue with life with four kids.

They start me on an IV and process me through three different pain killers to "find" which one will stop the pain. My migraines finally settle on something called Fioricet. All I know is that I was high as a kite and feeling absolutely no pain of any kind, and my mouth felt like cat fur with the taste of rubbing alcohol.

Poor Julian had finally passed out from sheer exhaustion on the pillow beside me and was snoring incessantly in my left ear. I didn't care because he had rubbed my back non-stop since 9:04 p.m., and it was now after midnight.

I laid there until they finally released me around 2 a.m. I took a cab home since my husband was at home with the other three kids, and there was no way in Hades that I could drive the Odyssey home at any speed under the influence of all the "Happy Drugs" they had just infused me with.

I took a Yellow Cab, got home, and Julian and I fell into our own separate beds, clothes and all.

I awake the next morning to "Honey, where are the car keys to the van?", my husband requests. "By my purse on the counter where we left them last night.", I reply in my still have drugged groggy state of being. Rattle, rattle, clank, thunk - "No there NOT!", he yells from across the house with a hint of impatience in his voice.

I have to fall out of bed in my state and head towards the kitchen to help him look for what obviously should be staring him right in the face. What I find are no keys. Next begins the frantic search since he's a major procrastinator in the key finding department, and he has to leave in five minutes for work. We look, and look, wake Julian to grill him since he was the one to grab the keys from the backside of the wheelchair the last I saw.

Still no keys were found. Husband is left taking the old clunker BMW to work without half his equipment. Pissed is an understatement in his mood.

After calling the hospital, and the cab company several times to see if they had found the keys, we finally caved into the fact that they had been lost for good. But I still called both places up until Saturday morning.

Now my big photograph class with Tara is bright and early on Saturday morning at 9:30. All I can think about is ridding myself of this nagging migraine that is now in "on again-off again" mode as it's trying to wind down. I'm popping my meds and getting acupuncture treatments to rid myself of this blight in my head. I am so weak by Friday night, but still manage a shower in order to be semi-ready by Saturday morning, but nearly have a heart attack in the shower as a palmetto bug (giant cockroach with wings) flies into the shower and I'm trying to smack it while soap suds are in my eyes. All I managed to do was smack the shower curtain rod, curtain and all, to the floor leaving me soapy and water spraying all over the bathroom floor. The palmetto bug escaped out the door.

The universe has decided that the scales are just about balanced because I wake up Saturday morning feeling somewhat normal, slightly weak, but ready to get to the class. That is until my husband wakes up and we have to finally deal with getting new keys made for the Odyssey.

Did I mention that I completely loath this van?

I call the Honda dealership and explain that I need a key to BOTH open the door and turn the car on since some egghead in the car security business decided that we need computerized chips in our car keys to protect us from the other shitheads stealing them.

WHO WANTS TO STEAL A FREAKING FAMILY VAN!!!!

I explained this several times so that they understood exactly what I needed. Well, after factoring in that I needed a new remote, needed to reprogram the immobilizer, and needed a new key, I got hit with a whopping $345 +/- estimate!

The husband hit the roof, hit the computer desk, and rattled off a series of expletives; much of the likes I've never heard of before.

"Think, think, think!", I kept repeating to myself. Suddenly I thought of a locksmith and figured they should be able to do this for much less. So I Goggled one and picked a local company called Ace Unlocks in Pensacola. Once again, I explained the situation and asked if they could do it.

"No problem.", the guy told me, "It'll be $150.". "Where is the car?", he asked next. I stupidly gave the phone to my husband to finish off the deal and he said they would meet me at the car, which is STILL parked in ER parking lot, at 1 pm on Saturday.

I THOUGHT everything was taken care as I went to ready myself for my photography class.

As soon as I got out of the bathroom, my husband announces that he got Pensacola Honda down to $150 and that's where we'll take it.

"But!!!", I reply, but am interrupted by my every-so-smart husband who says he told them he works at Wal-Mart and doesn't have $345 to re-key the car. They came down on the price cause they thought that since he worked at Wal-Mart, he doesn't have any money. I'm not sure if that was a dumb or smart idea, but it apparently worked so I went along.

I left for my photography class, but stopped by the ER to make sure the car was even still there and had not been vandalized since I hadn't seen it since Thursday night, and I asked if anyone had turned in the keys. No keys, but all was good as I headed on to the zoo for the class. The universe had seen that my yin/yang debt had been paid in full and life was back on balance.

I was so happy to finally meet Tara as we clicked, clicked, clicked our way through the zoo via the train. It was the first time I had used the new camera I had bought for my husband for father's day, but I was getting some fairly decent shots.

Tara was everything I thought she'd be: laid back, funny, into the moment, and generally a great person to enjoy this moment with. For once, I had finally forgotten the migraine episode, the delayed remodeling, the lost keys, and the basket case of husband I had left at home. I was into hippo's, dragonfly's, "banana" snakes, and figuring out how to make a fountain stand still in time.

It was the first perfect moment I had had since this whole insanity started.

SCREEEEEECCCHHHH!

It all came to a halt as soon as it began. I realized after the class was over that I had to go back to real life and deal with this stinking van! I wanted just to forget about and spend the rest of the day walking with Tara and taking pictures at the zoo. That seemed so much more normal than what I was facing once I got back in the BMW and headed home. But I had too; the husband had to have the car by Monday morning to go out of town.

I reluctantly left Tara and the peaceful zoo setting and headed home to arrange for a tow for the van and start this whole reprogramming process that I knew would consume the rest of my day. My head began to hurt a little again, but since I would be driving, there would be no taking foo-foo feeling meds until the job was done.

Since I hadn't eaten a thing since waking, I shoveled a bowl of fried rice down my gullet and called the towing company to meet me at the hospital to tow that piece of shit van to the Honda dealership. Nadia and I were dropped off and we waited about 45 minutes until a portly short man showed up and I had to watch the "oh so happy" look come across his face as I explained that he had to put it on his flatbed, sans keys!

There we were, watching a ringwormed faced, butt crack showing tow guy maneuver my parked van onto a flatbed without ripping out the tranny or tipping off the side of the truck in the process. And as many times as I had to see the crack of his ass, it was the first official full moon I have ever seen a 2 in the afternoon.

My head began to ache a little more in the hot sun as my linen shorts soaked the sweat dripping down my back.

Finally we were off to the dealership with Nadia and I riding shotgun in the front seat of the tow truck. No, Nadia was not the least bit thrilled about a first time ride in a tow truck. Her nails were firmly gripped into the door handle as she feared for her life the whole way there. Something about being high off the ground, the ride being bumpy, and the ringworm on the guys face was creeping her out. I was practically sitting on top of her for fear of being contaminated from the ringworm like stuff covering his face and arms. I officially felt like a redneck at that moment.

I reach a sense of nirvana as we unload the van at the dealership and I'm thinking "we're almost home" now. All they have to do is get the key, reprogram the car, and we're on our way in about an hour after we pay the $150 my husband finagled "BOB" in the service department down to.

Not. So. Fast!

The Universe Savings and Loan Department has decided that I owe again for all that enjoyment I got at the freaking photography class at the zoo and it's time to pay up cause I got a little more yin happening than yang again!

SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!

"BOB" informs that they have a "generic" key that will open the car up, but that they don't have a "master" key in which to "reprogram" my immobilizer in order to make me a key to start my car thus producing a somewhat normal life for me again. They don't have a master key in stock for "my make of car" and will have to order it, therefore my car can't be "fixed" until Tuesday.

"Excuse me!", I scream in my head! Didn't we just go over this shit with them this morning and they said they could fix the whole stinking car key issue for the price of my first born's leg?

Then "BOB" says he can call Enterprise and set up a car rental and "maybe" my car insurance will pick up the expense. So I get to work on the insurance end and file a claim with State Farm. I give "What's his name from the India Outsourcing Department", my info over the phone because the claim department he just talked to wants details in order to get me my rental car for the weekend. After giving "What's his name" all the info, he puts me on hold to tell the claims department to go ahead.

"Mrs. K***** - I'm sorry, but the claims department just closed, so they can't process your claim until Monday morning.", Mr. India-man says to me in his best fake-American accent.

I can't decide if A: I want to cry; B: I want to scream every expletive I've ever learned in my life at this idiot; or C: Throw the iPhone through the plate glass window in front of me in hopes that SOMEONE will understand what I've been through up until now.

I'm feeling the migraine wanting to kick in more and I am without my pain meds, but still I start chanting "Think, think, think!", to myself as I neurotically walk around a picnic table outside the service department. I'm finally settling into pissed mode as I go back to "BOB" and ask him why he didn't inform me such information this morning after giving him detailed info on what exactly I needed. "Because we didn't know exactly if we could do it until you brought the car in.", he says in his stupid service sales guy voice.

All I can manage in my head at the moment is how I will NEVER own another Honda after this moment considering all the money, time, and energy I have sunk into this jalopy of a van. Then I also remember why I never like to work with dealerships because it's all about money and less about actually helping a customer.

So I turn to "BOB" and say, "I called Ace Unlocks this morning and THEY said they could do it - no problem. Now why can THEY do it, and you can't?".

"Uh, uh, uh...... because you need the master key in order to reprogram the immobilizer or the key won't work to turn the car on.", "BOB" replies looking a little red in the face.

"But he guaranteed he could do it and even double checked to make sure.", I press on.

Suddenly there is a flurry of conversation between "BOB", another "service rep", and the "head" service-fixer-car person. They are all discussing, at the same time, how they think it's impossible to do without that "master key", and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. As they are talking, I whip out the iPhone and call Ace Unlocks while I'm standing in front of "BOB" and the so-called helpful service department personnel.

"Uh, hi. I'm the one that called you this morning about rekeying the Honda Odyssey. Can you still do that even though I don't have a key to the ignition?", I ask as suddenly voices quieten and all eyes are upon me. I explain again to this guy the whole situation, he assures me he can do it cause he was all ready to come and meet me at 1 p.m., before my husband got the hair-brained idea to take it to the Honda dealership in the FIRST place. He said he could be there in five minutes.

"Fine! Do it!", I said while "BOB" and his crew stared at me with wide eyes and gaping mouths. "BOB" continued to follow me around the service department assuring me that this guy couldn't do without that fucking master key I keep hearing about. "Well why don't you just ask him HOW he does it.", I keep telling "BOB".

Ace Unlocks shows up and takes over the car like he's done the same car a 100 times already today. You can now see "BOB" and the other service guys staring vicariously from the garage doors of the service department, highly anticipating whether this will work or not. The guy hooks a $10,000 (I had to ask) machine up to my ignition, goes back to his van, comes back and starts that freaking piece of crap van in under five minutes.

I just had to do the "Your the man" dance in the parking lot in front of all of those he overdressed, probably overpaid service department guys as I yelled over and said "Thanks 'BOB'!".

They immediately began closing all the garage doors, Bawhahahahaha! I began to tell the locksmith guy how my husband is going to seriously pay for not listening to me this morning for not having him do this in the first place.

So let's add up my expenses for this little escapade:

• $25.00 to have Honda make the key just to unlock my van doors, but not start the car.
• $0.00 towing charge cause that was covered under my iPhone travel protection insurance.
• $162.00 to have Ace Unlocks save my freaking sanity and make me a key in less than five minutes.

Total spent on my adventure on Saturday: $187.00

This is what I COULD have spent it on:

• Another great facial, manicure, and pedicure for my daughter and I.
• ALL the kids school supplies for this year.
• Most of the kids school clothes.
• The damn food processor that I need cause mine is broken unless I use a knife to activate it (another long story - let's just skip that one today).
• The rest of my hardware for my cabinets AND the glass backsplash I was planning on.
• The picnic table I was wanting for my backyard.
• Feeding 18.75 homeless people at Golden Corral!!!!!

On the way home, Nadia and I decide to stop off at Publix and pick out 6 gourmet cupcakes to devour cause frankly, we all damn needed it after this past week! As I am almost home from this nearly ill-fated expedition, the phone rings. Now usually I don't answer phone numbers I don't recognize, but something compelled me to answer this one.

"Hello.", I half wearily say.

"Mrs. K*****, this is Baptist Hospital. I just wanted to call to tell you that we found your car keys.", the kind lady replies.

There is a pause on my end, a very long, long, long, long, long pause. Then I proceed to smack the living shit out of my steering wheel so many times that if I kept going, it just might of very well flown out the side window leaving me with a new challenge to deal with THIS week.

Nadia suddenly climbed into the back seat.

"Mrs. K*****, are you still there?", she asks.

"Are these keys on a blue YMCA strap?", I slowly ask back.

"Yes ma'm! I found them in a drawer and I told everyone that they were the keys you kept calling us about, so I knew they were yours.", she has the impudence to chirp back after my days of mayhem and pandemonium caused by the very keys she is speaking of!

"I'll be right there.", I submissively reply as I sink into my drivers seat of the van that has held me hostage for stinking DAYS. The head begins to hurt again as I call my husband to deliver the unimaginable news. There is dead silence on his end followed by another group of expletives I don't think I've ever heard before again, so I quietly hang up on him and head for the hospital around the corner.

They hand me my keys in what I think is a befitting package: a plastic bio-hazard bag.

I head home, bypass the acupuncture needles and head right to my pain meds, come back to the kitchen and take two bites of the lasagna that has been waiting for me for 1/2 hour, then stick my head in the bag of cupcakes and promptly retrieve a extra large, gourmet Mocha Latte cupcake. It is gone in three bites.

If I were into hard liquor, I would have downed a pint in about three gulps at this moment.

Even though I had my original keys back, the ignition keys were useless now as the immobilizer had been reprogrammed to a new key. So I called Ace Unlocks, cause I just HAD to tell someone the ending of this long epic. He laughed, he was sympathetic, and then he said to bring the original key in and they would reprogram it for no charge.

Out of all the cast of characters in this whole migraine/lost keys episode, Ace Unlocks was the only entity/group/company that had any insight into my misfortune and truly wanted to help without jacking me around in fourteen different directions, quoting my outrageous estimates, and bringing me to the brink of insanity.

And they agreed that my husband should have listened to me all along.

I would like to literally walk up to Friedrick Nietzsche and bitch slap him for ever saying "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."! After times like this, I now consider this the stupidest saying I have ever heard!

Oh, and I should mention that, to top off this whole chapter in my life, just after I finished this blog the cops showed up saying they just received a 911 call from my house. Now considering that my husband took all the kids to the 2 p.m., showing of Harry Potter, I'm no where near the two cell phones in the house, and it's just me, Neo the Lovebird, and Remi the cat having a quiet Sunday at home.

What good is having an animal if they don't call 911 for help when you actually need it!

Now excuse me while I go take one of my prescribed controlled substances cause I feel the migraine coming on again, climb in bed for a nap, and sleep with my STUPID CAR KEYS!