Cars

Our cars, both of them, are also jealous of the fancy new storm door. The Subaru just needs some minor but arguably important things like a 45,000 mile checkup and new brake pads. Easy enough to have done if, for example, you have another car to drive in the meantime. Which brings us to the Ford.

We think the battery is dead. Dead, however, in a way that is not amenable to jump starting. In order to test this theory, we had to get the car out of the garage, where the whole front end was underneath a wood shelf so the hood couldn't be opened. There was also no room between the car and the wall, so there was no way to get a decent grip to push the car without opening one of the doors. The garage is also fairly narrow, so the car door had to quickly be closed to fit out the garage door (quickly enough to avoid any actual contact would have been ideal, but what can you do). Also, some of us just had surgery and cannot possibly push cars yet.

Once out of the garage, despite all the room in the world, we couldn't open the hood for a good twenty minutes for as yet unknown reasons. Jump starting cars is one of about three handy-type tasks that Aaron and I are capable of, so once the hood was open we thought we had things covered, except for the eventual realization that the car was not, in fact, starting. All the while Snuffy and Dylan were next to us in the yard pouting. Getting to the yard was not as easy as you would think because having the two cars close enough together to connect the cables meant they were in the only part of the driveway wide enough to have them next to each other, which completely blocks the gate to the yard.

Plan B is to leave the keys in the ignition and hope someone takes the car, which will be tough because the Subaru is blocking it in.

Several hours after giving up for the day, I went to unlock the Subaru with the automatic clicky unlocker thing. I was distraught when it didn't work because ugh, yet one more thing to have fixed. But no, it was not broken. It simply doesn't work when the 1) the doors are already unlocked and 2) the key is in the ignition.