BMW Blessings

My Daddy has been looking for a car for me down in California for some time now.  I have been looking for one here, with not a whole lot of luck.  He would occasionally send me pictures of possibilities... One such picture was of an '88 BMW 5 series.  Silver.  I fell in love.  I swore then and there to pledge my allegiance to BMW's forevermore. Everything about it was beautiful.  I spent my time looking for old school BMer's in Utah, California, even Wyoming and Idaho.  Well, to make a long story short, my daddy found the most beautiful old school BMer 5 series I had ever seen for a killer price.  Not to mention, it's in amazing condition.  The one problem was that I was in Utah and it was not.

So my amazing mother devised a wonderful plan.  She bought us two one-way tickets to California, where we would spend the weekend, go to church Sunday, sleep Sunday afternoon, and drive through the night.  I planned on going to work on Monday morning, and all things would be fine.  Sunday came around and I started feeling really sick.  Not good.  I texted my boss, let him know that I wasn't gonna be in Monday morning, but hopefully would be feeling better to come in during the afternoon.  So, I took a two hour nap.  I felt better, and thought I would be able to drive home no problem  We left around 9 o'clock, mom took the first shirt and I slept for another four hours (on and off).  At about 1 I took over driving.  I thought I was feeling better than I actually was.  I made it until about 4 and I could not drive anymore.  Mom offered to take over and drive to the next rest stop and we would just sleep until the morning, and then finish our trip.

10 minutes later:

8 miles out of Parowan.  Mile marker 71.
Hazards go on.  Car stops.  "What...?" I ask.
"I'm not sure...   I think it's overheated.  Just gonna sit here for a little bit and let it cool off so I can pop the hood and check everything out."
I went back to sleep.

10 minutes later:

"You having problems with your car?" Says the officer, at least at the time I assumed it was at the time when I suddenly thought it was morning when his spotlight hit our car.
Mom explained the situation to him, and when he offered to drive us into town, she politely told him one more time what was going on.  We don't need a mechanic, we need this thing to cool down so we can look at it.  So then he offered to dispatch someone to come check on us in about 15 minutes.  She liked that idea, and then he went on his merry way.

1 hour later:

"Pretty sure it's been more than 15 minutes... how long have I been asleep?"
"'Bout an hour."
She had popped the hood, and couldn't get the radiator cap off.  Sometimes I hate it when men deal with cars, because then when women try to fix something, everything is screwed on so gosh darn tight, we have to call men back over to do it anyway.
I offered to give it a go, with no luck.
Mom, being the intelligent one, decided to look in the trunk for something to open the cap with.  She FINALLY got it open, and to our lovely surprise, it was cool; not looking very "overheated" like the gauge was telling us.  She poured a little water in it, for good measure, and we decided we needed to mosey the 8 miles to Parowan.  So hazards went back on, and we went about 40 miles an hour for 8 miles and made it to the gas station in Parowan.  6 o'clock in the morning.  I couldn't go back to sleep.  By now we were both too keyed up to sleep.

Hours passed, we occasionally checked the gauge, which was constantly in the red.  We found this puzzling, seeing as the engine and everything else about the car was obviously not hot either... it was quite ridiculous.  But we went with it, because it was my new car, and neither one of us wanted anything serious to happen to it.  We called around for mechanics, all of whom were closed and not very friendly anyway.  We walked around the gas station (which is about as civilized as Parowan gets) and I discovered the Big Buck Hunt game.  This was when I knew we were in trouble.  I also knew we were in trouble when the woman parked next to us changed her "clothes" twice in her car, begged for money for "gas", and rolled doobies.

My brother and sister wound up driving all the down to tow us back, but we had the thought that maybe when the previous owner steam cleaned the engine, some part of it got wet and the sensor was just acting up.  It didn't make sense to my mom, my dad, or I that the gauge would still be buried in the red when the car had been off for 5 hours.  Needless to say we had done a lot of praying.

It was not a good day.  I called work to see if a service guy could help me out and maybe troubleshoot the problem with my car and let me know if it would be safe to drive it, but kept getting no answer, only to find out that service had the day off.  That should have been a "duh" but... well.  We hadn't slept much.  And on top of all that I was dealing with some rather ridiculous drama from an individual who found he had stuck his foot so far into his mouth that it had reached his lower intestines.  He was having a hard time getting it out, we'll leave it at that.

Gentle readers, I, Makenna Donaldson, was being a snot.  I hate being a snot.  The worst part of it all was that I KNEW I was being a snot, and I KNEW I needed to stop, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  I feel extremely bad about this, because I know it made my mom feel worse, seeing me so... like that.  Well, Heavenly Father has a way of teaching us things in ways that are mysteriously wonderful.  He knew I needed (and always do need) a lesson in patience.  And learning to keep my mouth shut and stop complaining.  Around 12.30 p.m. a mechanic came up to my car and asked us if something was wrong and if he could help at all.  I pounced.  "YES! Something is wrong!" My mom, being much more intelligent than I, was a lot more polite to him than I, the hysterical daughter, as I shoved trail mix into my mouth and grimaced.  I had eaten far too much trail mix on this trip.  She told him what was going on with the gauge, and after a little looking, thinking, searching, feeling, poking, and talking, he and my parents decided that the sensor had gotten wet and was thus acting up, but my car itself was just fine.  In fact, it's in fabulous condition.  The sensor is a no-big-deal quick fix.  For this I was grateful.  Dear readers, at this time, I smiled.  I hadn't smiled in hours.  My mom proceeded to explain to him that he had really made my day, because I hadn't smile in a while.  I'd like to think this made him happy.

Our mechanic (also a tow truck driver) then told us that he had driven all the way up to Parowan from St. George to pick up 1 single car from some fair grounds, and when he arrived they wouldn't even let him take the car because they were starting their races, so he'd driven all the way up for nothing.  I quickly yelled out, "That's not true! You came all the way up here to help us!" I was smiling so big I was sure he could see every tooth.

My mom and I talked and decided that we obviously had to be taught.  I am pretty sure that lesson was mostly for me, because I was the snot, and have a whole lot more to learn than my mom.  Heavenly Father always blesses us, but there's a lot of blessings we just have to wait for.  Heavenly Father totally blessed us yesterday, but we definitely had to wait.  And that's totally OK!