Car Trouble

I had a new experience today. Yes, I have had car trouble before, but not this. I was sitting in HORRIBLE traffic (I needed to go about 2 miles and had already been on the road for 15 minutes) at 5pm today when I noticed a lot of smoke around me. My first thought was "Wow, someones car is really smoking badly." Well, when the cars around me moved on and the smoke was still there, I realized it was my car! I looked down at my temperature gauge and it was past the "H". "What should I do" was the first thing that came to my mind. We had just finished swimming with friends and were returning to their house (we're staying with them while the parents of the friends we are living with are visiting for a week). I was trying to keep Orin awake until we got home so he could take a nap and I was really frustrated at our lack of movement on the road. I quickly pulled off of the road into a business parking lot since I had no idea what was wrong but new it couldn't be good. I called Damien to say "Help, come and get us" and after a quick call to my dad who is always the first person we call with car questions, who said to definitely not drive anywhere, I called AAA. Which, by the way, when you're living in a city with no family, tons of traffic and friends who live as far away as 30 miles, AAA is possibly the best $80 you could spend every year. :-) I'm glad I talked to my dad since AAA usually takes 1-2 hours to get to you. So instead of waiting until Damien got there and us just sort of sit around wondering what to do before we decided on AAA, I got a head start on it. This time the tow truck came in about an hour -way faster than I expected since it was rush hour when I called - and we were off to drop the car a Midas. Thanks to cell phones, a husband who left work as soon as I called to rescue me, a dad who knows a lot about cars, goldfish, Cheerios & passys in the diaper bag to keep the kids occupied, still having Micaiah's old car seat in Damien's car so we only had to move one seat, a stroller for Orin to push Micaiah around in to pass the time, a phone book that I keep in the car (perfect for finding a close mechanic), 411 when I realized I didn't write down the address of the mechanic and the phone book was in the car up on the tow truck, after hours drop boxes, and the rain pour waiting to start until I dropped the key in the box, we arrived safely back at the house 15 minutes before people arrived for Bible Study. Just enough time to make grilled cheese! Hopefully when they call tomorrow (after 9am as I requested) the car won't take to long to fix or be too expensive. As bad car experiences go, this one wasn't so bad.