Not exactly how I pictured spending my Friday night

Anna Marie had an appointment at her eye specialist yesterday. The office is about 30 miles north of here in the next county. She and Jason left straight after school, while I still had to finish my pages at work.

I left work a little early, since I'd taken a short lunch break; stopped at the grocery store; and was about to start dinner when I got a call.

"I need you to come get us," said the voice on the other end.

"Why?" I asked, inquisitively.

"I think the clutch cylinder on the Jeep is out."

The Jeep. The vehicle that was just fixed two days ago. That a friend helped him put back together in exchange for his looking over a computer. The Jeep that not only ruined a pulley and the water pump with its little stunt last month on the highway, but also locked up the new alternator that was put on it in South Carolina.

(Did Jason tell the nice lady at the auto parts store HOW the thing locked up when he exchanged it? No, he did not.)

I turned the oven off, put the muffins I'd mixed up in the fridge (we were to have breakfast for dinner) and drove up.

Since we were all starving by that point, we went to Zaxby's (where the nice manager lady agreed to let me have all celery with my wings instead of fries!) and on to the parts store to get some brake fluid. My dad had suggested that Jason put the fluid in the cylinder and try to get the Jeep back home.

Problem was, the fluid went in the top - and right out the bottom.

We called for my dad, who was eating dinner. He and my mother arrived on the scene about 45 minutes later, which would make it about 7:30 by this point.

Somehow, my dad got the Jeep home by switching gears without using the clutch. Jason drove dad's truck (because my mom had forgotten her license) and we three girls rode home in my car.

Oh, and of course, when we took the Jeep to mom's, Anna Marie stayed.

(Oh, and she wore that striped shirt to school for her pictures. And discovered that one of her friends had the exact same shirt.)

I've just finished baking the mini muffins, so maybe we can have them with dinner tonight. If Jason doesn't eat them all when he wakes up, that is. I need to get in the shower, because it looks like I'm going to be driving my mom to the chiropractor this morning.

Is that how I envisioned spending my Friday night? Nope. But like I told Anna Marie, it could've been much worse. We were in a parking lot, not stuck on the side of a road like I've been so many times. We had just eaten dinner, so we weren't starving. I had my car, so we could leave and get the stuff we needed. And she and I took a lovely walk in the cool fall weather around the shopping center, where we saw multi-colored appliances, and a baseball game playing on the TV in a sports bar, and the most paint samples that she'd ever seen.

And, most importantly, we were together - which I guess is what really matters after all.