Life in England: Bedlam

Before you get too far, don't worry: everyone is all right. I think God saw that I was writing the blog again and thought, "She needs something to write about this week. I think I'll give her a month's worth of stories."

To begin with, I'll share some good news: a week-and-a-half ago, our bursar told me that there was an error with my pay adjustment in September and I should have been given a 2% instead of a 1% raise. So, I received a lump sum of the equivalent of 1% that day!

Now, on to the bedlam.

Last Saturday, I woke up feeling very dizzy and had a headache all day. I was frustrated more than feeling sorry for my illness because we had plans to go to Liverpool for the day. It was a beautifully sunny day, too. I also hate wasting time, let alone wasting a whole day! Resting in bed also set me back with my work, thus making for a pretty uneventful Sunday, too. I have no idea what was wrong, but it took all day and night to recover from it.

Sunday and Monday, I felt a bit out of it, but good enough to return to work. Tuesday, I could feel an inkling of a sore throat coming on in the morning and by the end of the day, I had completely lost my voice. I was thankful that at this point, nothing was wrong with Jackson. I will gladly take all of the illnesses in his place. That same day, a mild case of conjunctivitis popped up (again!) and my face broke out worse than any time in my teenage years. I looked and felt monstrous.

As we were pulling out of the driveway at 6:30 on Wednesday morning, something felt really odd with the car. Since it had snowed over night, I figured the tyres were just struggling to move through the thickly packed ice crystals. After I managed to get the car out of the driveway, I had to restart it but realised that the car wasn't running normally, but rather it was hopping like a kangaroo. At this point, I figured it was too cold for the car to function. I made it a bit further in the car--probably about 20 feet--before I gave up. Lee came out to help get the car back in the driveway and I called AA for help.

We got Jackson back in the house and after I waited 54 minutes on the phone hearing that I "shouldn't hang up or I will give up my place in the queue" for the hundredth time, I hung up the phone. Next, I downloaded an AA app which let me set-up an appointment for someone to come and look at the car immediately. The electronic message said that someone would be with me by 8:30.

I called my head teacher and explained the situation as soon as I received the AA confirmation. When 8:30 rolled around, there was indeed a mechanic on my doorstep for which I was so thankful. I also had a lot of faith in his ability to fix the car troubles because I loaded Jackson into the car and got ready to head to Preston by 9 o'clock.

Well, around 9 o'clock, when I expected to be rolling down the road, the mechanic told me that the brake was stuck to the back wheel and something was awry with the handbrake line. Then, he said that a tow truck would pick up the car in "an hour-and-a-half to two hours." I immediately called the local garage and made an appointment for the car to be worked on when the tow truck finally did arrive. The man I spoke to said, "I'll have a look at it today."

Jackson and I went back into the house and made the most of our time together since it didn't look like I would be able to go into work at all. On the upside, it was my half-day of teaching anyway, so I essentially only missed three hours of work.

Three hours later, the tow truck came and took our car down the road. While I saw it riding away on the trailer, I called the garage to tell them that the car was on its way and the mechanic said again, "I'll have a look at it."

At 4:45, I rang to check on the car and I was told, "I didn't have time to have a look at it." Just great! Our AA covers something called 'onward travel' which means that they will provide a rental car or accommodation if we end up stranded somewhere. This sounds like a great idea in theory, but if you call to arrange it and are put on hold for 45 minutes and the only rental place in Southport is closed when you hang up, then I guess it's not worth the extra money.

After running lots of options of how to get to work on Thursday, I came up with the idea to get a taxi to my co-worker's house and carpool with her the rest of the way to Jackson's nursery and our school. This was all dependent on her being willing to go with this plan and thankfully, she was! I was so relieved.

The relief was short-lived, though. Poor Jackson was getting off the couch to do his nightly Hakuna Matata show on the hearth and after he got one leg off the couch, he lost his balance and free-fell toward the coffee table, smacking his ear loudly on the edge. He cried for a half-an-hour after the impact. I felt absolutely awful. We didn't have a car to take him to the children's A&E (the closest one being in Ormskirk) and to get a taxi there and back would have cost a small fortune. Four minutes after the incident, the NHS 111 advice line told us to monitor him through the night and wake him up every hour to ensure that he didn't have a major head injury. The upper third of his ear bruised a dark grey-purple colour almost immediately which made me feel even more horrible. He refused to let us apply any ice and he didn't want to lay on his left side because it hurt so badly. (In the end, Jackson only suffered a bruise which has slowly faded as the days have gone on, thank Goodness.)

At 6:30 Thursday morning, the taxi arrived. The three of us made our way through the freshly fallen snow to lock-in the car seat, but Jackson took a tumble on the sidewalk and his dinosaur costume for World Book Day was covered in freezing cold snow. I quickly brushed him off and gave him a hug, but then, as I dashed around the back of the taxi, I slipped and fell right on my back in the middle of the road. In the two seconds I took to gather myself before attempting to get up again, the thought crossed my mind to just turn back. But, that's not my style, so we latched the car seat in frantically and Jackson and I headed on our way.

Around Noon on Thursday, I was able to call the mechanic and he said that the car would be ready by the end of the day--it needed a new handbrake line and something else to do with the handbrake. When I arrived to pick up the car, the bill was the exact amount of my pay raise. It's a good thing I didn't spend any of my little bonus on anything fun!