Thank Heavens for AAA and Nice People!

About a month ago I got sucked in by an infomercial for AAA. We'd never been members before, but I often wished we were because they always got better hotel rates. Anyway, maybe it was the free extra membership, or maybe the complementary stainless steel thermos, but we decided to sign up. About a week ago we got our cards, and a couple days later we saved our first money on a hotel for a business trip when we got a AAA rate that Brad's work travel agency couldn't match!

But today was when I became really grateful. On our way home from Ty's swimming lesson, the car's steering froze up, and it stopped accelerating. After trying a couple times to start it up again, I realized that Ty and I were in the hot sun with a broken-down car, without a cell phone (I left it home accidentally!) and my husband was up in Austin an hour away. After turning on the hazards, and using my best hand-to-ear signal to symbolize a phone, a fellow motorist took pity on me and lent me his phone. He also mentioned that he's a car salesman, and gave me his card to call him if life with my Taurus didn't work out. (No worries, Cosmo the blue Taurus is home tonight in our garage, working splendidly.)

AAA to the rescue! While we waited, clouds covered the sun, making it blessedly cooler. Just 15 minutes later a nice man from the Dominican Republic rescued Ty and me. Without having to pay anything, we were chauffeured to my new favorite Auto shop, just about a mile from our house. Gilberto Herrera is the proprietor, and although I was impressed with him before when we took the car in for something, I became more so today. He offered to take us home since Brad wasn't with me, then he found the problem and quickly had it fixed. He came and picked us up at the house, as well! Not only that, the total was ten dollars less than he quoted me, plus he gave me free gas!

I guess I'm pretty proud of myself: I handled a possibly stressful situation really well all by myself; several people were really nice and helpful; and we now have a mechanic that we trust, and he's just around the corner from us! And it's nice that although it was kind of a pain and cost us a couple hundred bucks to fix the car, several blessings (joining AAA, clouds covering the sun, nice people, good mechanic) were interspersed throughout, making it as pleasant as could be!