Saturday, September 1, 2007

Labor Day, auto body damage, and Sign Language

It's labor day weekend, and we're hanging out at home. Ezra's out of school Monday, Jonathon's off of work, and oddly - so am I (from the work from home job, not the mommy/wife/etc part)... we don't really have plans. If the weather is ok tomorrow we may go up to the lake and feed the ducks and splash around at the water banks. Ezra would be happy just staying home playing with matchbox and hotwheels cars ... he's all about cars right now. Even planning which one he'd like to have when he's a grownup. He agrees that spending more then 20k on a new car is silly.... smart kid so far. I've officially paid all taxes on cars (Mecklenburg County even charges a special 30.00 per vehicle on top of regular county/city taxes), and had registration renewals on cars, and even a state inspection on mine today... which turned out to be an adventure. Since I work for the dealership (have for 7 years now) that's where I go for most things, while there for picking up I had my state inspection and oil changed. I had Jesse w/ me today - Ezra opted to stay home and play. Jesse and I ventured into the showroom where there's a $91.000 Saleen Mustang (yes, seriously) that has a $17,000 paint job - as we were walking (Jesse was walking) Jesse reached and grabbed one of the 'ropes' that was around it... to my dismay the poles the ropes were attached to were NOT attached/bolted into the floor. So the pole came crashing down onto this car, just above the right headlight and put a chip about the size of this: ** on the car. Ok, so this could happen with ANYONE, but it happened with ME!!! Why weren't they bolted down?? Well, all of that was irrelevant at this point, innocent mistake on an 17,000 dollar paint job. The sales manager was very disturbed, and at first thought I was playing a sick joke on him - but I reluctantly told him I was not. I ended up speaking with the owner about it, who eased my tears (yes, I cried - I felt horrible!) and worries by telling me that it could have happened with anyone, even could have been chipped on a test drive. He seemed more understanding then I expected, and made me feel at ease somewhat. But I still feel horrible, I mean - it's just a car - but GEEZ, it's a $91,000 one! Needless to say, after I left, at the end of the day - one of my co-workers called me and told me that they were planning to bolt the poles down - go figure.
Here are two pics of the actual car from our showroom floor (pre-damage of course) - one of them is a pic of the sticker, notice on the right hand side you can read 'paint - $17,000' WHO BUYS THESE THINGS?? Notice the pole in the picture? Well, that's the one that slammed into the car.




On to the importance of modeling and being consistent... Since Jesse was about 5,6 months old I've been trying to introduce sign language; and he's done well with understanding it since about 9-10 months old... actually doing it for me was another lesson in learning all together! He started doing a few things here and there, and from about 12 months forward he's just progressed with signs signs signs! Now, he's saying the words along with signing! Ok, so I'm proud. Indulge me will you? Excuse me being super silly in the video! He's signing 'eat' and saying it - with a strong emphasis on the 't' of eat. He's so funny. His vocabulary is growing so fast!!




0 comments: