The notebook

And the saga continues...I drove up to Placerville on Thursday night with Milo, since I was working from home on Friday anyway, and wanted to avoid the serious weekend traffic. When I got to Sacramento, it was about 10:30 at night, and all of a sudden my check engine light pops on, I look down, and the temp. gauge is WAY beyond the hot zone. Crrrrrap. So I take the next exit (Watt), where there just happens to be ZILCH as far as civilization goes, and pull onto a semi-lit street and park. I call my dad, who tells me I need water for my radiator to cool it off, but that I can't make it to a gas station or I might ruin the engine. So I walk up to the nearest house, see that the TV is on, and knock on the door (with my parents still on the line, because you just never know about these things, and it is a shady area). A woman answers, says "Of COURSE I'll help you!" and wakes up her husband to come help me, and they both run out in their pjs, introduce themselves, and immediately set to helping me with my car and cooing over Milo, who's huddled in the backseat with a panicked look on his face. Eventually their neighbour gets home too, and happens to know a lot about cars, and seriously: this man has just gotten off of his second job of the day, because he is paying off a wedding for one of his daughters, and meanwhile has 3 OTHER kids in college. He's tired. But he stops and enthusiastically helps all the same. They all stay until I am well taken-care of, the woman (who introduced herself and her husband as Ally and Noah...hence the title) is chatting to me the whole time, while her neighbour is showing me pictures of HIS cat on his cell phone, while cooling off my radiator with the other. They offered to follow me most of the way home, even, and waved goodbye when I drove home in my semi-fixed car. Let me just take a second to shout out to Noah and Ally and their neighbour whose name I didn't catch, and say that you have restored my faith in the human race and how genuinely good and nice people can be. Thanks.

Also of course a shout-out to my dad (and mom!) who stayed up waaaaayyy past their elderly bedtime (hah!), and coached me through it all on the phone, and stayed up until I got home. AND who are letting me switch back to using my original car, while my dad figures out if the one I've had is still okay to drive around. Lifesavers.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here blogging while my parents nap, and Nolan "reads Harry Potter", aka while Nolan plays Mob Boss on his iPhone and pretends to read even though HE SHOULD BE SAVOURING HIS READING TIME that he normally doesn't get. I know he knows this, and I imagine that's why he's hiding it behind his Harry Potter book. AS IF I can't see. I think this picture sums up just how much I've missed him (originally intended to be a cute picture, but as fate would have it: no.):

See my face? That is my facial reaction to the thought, "sick!l" with what Nolan is doing. Although to be honest, I'm actually pretty impressed that we caught a burp like that one he's accidentally doing on camera.

Today was pure laziness and ladderball and Foster's Freeze ice cream and sunshine and sleeping in. Tonight we may or may not go to the casino (Europe money!) to take advantage of Nolan's card counting skillz, and then sit in the hot tub under the stars with some of my dad's wine. Tomorrow we're going rafting in the afternoon with the fam and ylehsa, and honestly after that I have no idea what we're doing for the next couple days. And you know, I don't really care.