And they say April 15th is a bad day....

I'm here to tell you differently! Yesterday was a horrible day....April 16th!

Earlier in the week, I had scheduled to take the Mazda in for routine maintenance. Since I was going to have the kids, I did think to ask how long it should take. They told me 2-3 hours, so I packed up some books, snacks, the laptop and a couple of movies. The appointment was scheduled for 9am, so I had to be out the door at 8am. (The garage is in South Charleston, about 50 minutes away.) Early appointment meant waking the kids up; I don't like to do that!

Anyway, we got there, got settled, ate breakfast, and watched some cartoons on their tv. About 10:15, the service manager comes up and tells me that we have to have new tires. The ones are the car are worn to the cords. GREAT! #1 - We have to call Mike at work, #2 - we just put new tires on that car on June 30, 2008, #3 - they wouldn't be able to have the tires there until 1pm. So, Mike talked to the guy and decided that we would get all 4 tires done. (Cha-ching....bye bye vacation money.) Time to pull out the laptop and get the movies set up. Both of the kids love the Muppet Show DVDs that we have, so we watched one of those to pass the first bit of time. Then we had "lunch" - cheerios, Cheez-Its, dried fruit and a couple pieces of Easter candy. Good lunch, huh? Luckily, I had taken enough snacks! After lunch, we watched Shrek. We also took a short walk outside and looked a 3 cars. Nicholas wanted to go back inside....that was fine by me. Too much traffic to worry about.

1pm came and went. 2pm came and went. 3pm came and went. At that point, I asked one of the sales guys that I had been bugging all day if he would call down and see where we were. At that point, the tires were on, but they were still waiting to get it on the alignment machine. About 2:30 a man came and joined us. He was having re-call work done on his car. It was nice to have someone to talk to, but the kids were just as glad to see him. I felt bad because Nicholas kept talking and talking and talking to him. Elizabeth wanted him to read her books. It was just something new. He left at 4:30 and we were still sitting there waiting for our car. Another lady got there about 4:15; she was only having her oil changed. Lucky her! ;)

Shortly, and I do mean shortly, before 5pm, they came back to me. The alignment on the car was good. They didn't have to adjust it at all. Question time ---- why then are the tires wearing on this car so bad?????? They couldn't give me an answer. They have no idea why. Everyone involved thought the alignment would be off. Ugh! I politely, but firmly, told the guy to keep the tires that my husband would be calling in the morning. (Smart move on my part....Mike was glad I thought to tell them to hang onto the tires.)

I don't know where we are going to go from here yet. Mike wants to go see the worn out tires for himself. Once he does, then we will decide how we want to handle this with Mazda customer service.

You are probably thinking...wow, that's bad. Not everything.....Nicholas was supposed to have soccer practice at 6pm last night. He did get there, but he was about a half hour late. And all 4 of us have a cold right now. Yes - all of 4 of us at once! It was not a good day yesterday!

So, today I am hopeful that this sunshine remains and we have a much better day than yesterday! (Honestly, it couldn't get much worse.)

I hope that you have a great day! Enjoy the sunshine when you have it!