The Haunted Van

Okay, so I have to tell you about last Friday morning. It started out as any typical weekday. Me rushing around trying to get the kids up and ready for school--think cattle prodder and kids in S-L-O-W motion despite said cattle prodder. As I have kids in the elementary school and the Jr High & so does my sister, we car pool & she does the elementary route and I do the Jr High route. So on Friday I rush out with my boys & my sister's oldest & we hop in the van & nothing happens. The engine doesnt' even turn over. I panic, but get my neighbor--THANK YOU CHIP! You're a real hero!!--to bring the boys to school while I call my dad. Chip gets back to my house to jump my van off a couple of minutes before my dad arrives. After several failed attempts they get my van started. It dies and has to be jumped again. I follow my dad for a bit and then pull in to where I normally exercise in the mornings (yes, I am still the poster child for why not to exercise and my weight is now up 5 pounds after over 3 consecutive weeks of working out & dieting--go figure!) . I pull in because my dashboard lights are flickering like crazy. Spooky crazy. While telling my dad I think something's not right, the van dies & has to be jumped off again. It seems to be okay so I take off toward work again. I'd not gone but a few hundred yards when my lights started flickering again. This time my guages were going wild too. Like the little orange thingie was flipping from E to F at mach one and speaking of mach one, my spedometer was going from zero to 120 and back at the same rate. All the guages were jumping around. I pull over--cause even I know this isn't right & whip out my phone to call hubby & that's when I got scared. My windshield wipers came on. Front and back. I mean, what do you do? It's not like you can turn them off since they are already OFF. & I look a fool cause it sure wasn't raining, but again, what could I do? Despite the fact they were scraping back and forth with a spine-chilling screech over my DRY windows, the wipers were OFF I tell you. I tell my hubby my van is HAUNTED & I don't feel safe to drive to work--I mean what if other things start miraculous coming on, like say the brakes or the cruise control & I can't turn them off either? So I meet him at the repair shop & then take his truck to work while he rides his motorcycle back to his work. Yeah, he *hated* having to ride his bike to work, let me tell ya. The guy at the garage--THANKS WYATT!--said I had an internal short in my battery. :) Okay, I'll admit, I didn't know this could cause my windshield wipers to come on all by themselves. The freaky part is that he said people usually notice their radio flickering first--my radio stayed perfect the entire time. Even when the van wouldn't start the radio would come on. ((Insert Twilight Zone music here for full effect. ;) )

If you haven't entered the Virtual Book Bag contest, be sure to check out March 19ths post and enter!!!

And doesn't this picture of Matthew just make you want to slide your hands inside that coat and get warm? :)