Forgiveness ...

I don't mean to get down on Etsy, but it sure seems like the site is down.... a lot!!
I do understand, but it gets frustrating. But, I do love the Haim on fire graphic. It makes me laugh.

I guess I am just an eBay girl at heart. And I am okay with that!

On another note.........................................

I have been kind of out of it lately. Really, I have been on this sort of emotional roller coaster ride. If you remember, back in March there was an attempt to steal my car from my work parking lot. You can read all about what happened here and what happened subsequently here.

So, now it's 3 months later. I am over it. Oh, my lovely car hasn't been starting for a week and a half anyway (not related to the theft incident). I get this call from this community mediation group to meet with the juvenile who tried to steal my car.

From what the gentleman tells me, juveniles are 50% less likely to commit another crime if they go through this program. Of course I will do it. Plus, I probably need the closure of talking to this guy and putting all of this behind me.

The meeting was today after work. I was a complete wreck yesterday and today. I don't know why, but I was so nervous. I really figured he was probably a good kid in with the wrong crowd. I had already been told he had never committed another crime. But, I really wanted to give him a good learning experience without freaking him out. I also wanted him to realize that he was better than all this and he didn't have to continue his life down this path.

So, I go into the room and he and the mediator are already there. They were both so friendly, it was really easy. He explained what happened, that he was trying to straighten up his life and that he was never going to do anything like this again. He also apologized. We also worked out a payment plan for him to repay the cost to fix my car. It was a positive experience and now I am ready to put this to rest. I hope that it had a positive impact on his young life, too.

I have forgiven him. Really, I have. It wasn't hard either! He sincerely apologized. We all make mistakes, but not everyone is a strong enough person to live up to the mistakes and ask for forgiveness.

I wish nothing but the best for him.

Well, tomorrow is Friday...YAY!! I just have to get through tomorrow and I will feel so much better. I have quite a day tomorrow as well at work. Kind of emotional for me, too. Someday I will post my Creative Nonfiction piece about Mr. Bump.

At least I will be out of the office! :)

Have a Fabulous Friday! I will talk to you soon!
Love,
Kim

More Car Issues...

The Latest on the car....

You are NOT going to believe this!!

Today I took my boyfriend's car to the mechanic (he needed new brakes) and got a ride in with the mechanic's wife (who I work with.) Jim took my car to work.

Everything was fine until he got home. Then, THE CAR WILL NOT TURN OFF!!!

Those jerks who tried to steal my car messed up the tumblers where you put the key in, and now the key will not turn to turn off the car.

I happened to be at the mechanic's still when Jim called me. He gave me some tips to turn the car off:
1. Wiggling the key would not work.
2. I received a full description of how to unhook the coil from the distributer cap (I think that is all the correct terminiology.) I really thought once I opened the hood it would be really clear to me. Not so much.
3. Also, I could unhook the battery and the car would eventually turn off. I didn't like that either, to tell you the truth. I am kind of scared of the battery.

So I get there, assess the situation and promptly call Daddy. And I actually had him stumped for a moment. He didn't want me to take off the distributor coil (again, probably the wrong terminology) because it is high voltage. Oh, yeah, I also remembered that I never had actually told him about the stolen-car-attempt situation. So he got a couple of interesting surprises.

Now, I would like to say my car is old and pretty crappy most of the time, but I only drive it to work and we use Jim's car for everything else. My car has lots of little quirks. One such quirk is that it likes to stall out or just stop at totally inappropriate times. I have mastered this to the point where it almost never happens because I know exactly what to do when.

So, my Dad gives me instructions over the phone of how to stall out my car by opening this thingy and closing that thingy. I follow the instructions. I ask my dad if anything bad could happened, it seemed pretty dangerous. Well, if flames come up around my hands, move them. Haha. No, but really it could happen!

Ironically my crappy car will NOT stall out. The one time I try to stall it out, it won't. After 10 minutes the car stops. We all cheer. I think my neighbor thought we were nuts. Me on the phone, Jim without his shoes, and me in my professional paralegal outfit with greesy hands leaning over the car engine. Nuts! (don't worry, I had a good laugh with her about it later...)

So, I wasn't about to deal with unhooking the battery so that it doesn't die, neither was Jim, so we decided, the battery can die, that's fine. I have a battery charger anyway.

Moral of the story:
1. Always lock your car does lest someone tries to steal your car.
2. Even though you may think that nothing is wrong with your car after such an incident and that you couldn't possibly be bothered with having a minor detail fixed...you probably should have a professional take a look at the car, and get said minor detail fixed.
3. Daddy can always get you out of a jam.

Thanks for reading.