Freeway FAIL

E and I seem to have bad "Carma". We both take fairly good care of our cars, they're serviced regularly and we always fix or replace things as needed, but they consistently seem to break down at the same time. E's car needed a lot of TLC and has been in the shop for a little while now. It got everything from new gaskets to new tires and just when we thought it was ready to come home, it has to go back into the shop for another tweak. You'd think that would be enough bad carma for one family but you'd be wrong. Instead, my car Sydney joins the foray by breaking down in spectacular fashion.

I was supposed to take grumpy man Zena to the vet today. He was scheduled for a check up and I needed to pick up another bottle of antibiotics for Zuzu (aka Fuckie) that I'd already paid for and had waiting for me. I nabbed Zena with an empty promise of food, got him in his box, and set off with him protesting loudly in the front seat. I would have given him a dish of food but he can be a vindictive pottier and I didn't want him peeing and or pooping in my car, both of which he's done at his last two appointments. Fun times. 

The vet we're currently seeing since our old one closed her doors is down in the Westchester area of Los Angeles. I was driving along, making good time for LA and moving from one freeway to the next, trying to quiet the disgruntled Zena so I could hear my Harry Potter audio book (priorities!), when my battery light comes on. This is super weird, the battery light usually comes on when the battery is dead and the car wont start. I'm driving the car at freeway speeds right now so it's obviously started, but I figure I'd better take the next exit so I can check it out. I start moving towards the right lane from the middle when I notice that my car slowing down Fast, without any input from me. Uh oh.

This would be the second time my car has stopped on this freeway since I bought it. The first time it happened, my oil pan had been punctured by a runaway piece of something that fell off the car in front of me. This time, there was no apparently physical explanation but the same thing happened. The car slowed, I'm fairly sure it was because the engine stalled, I could barely steer and I couldn't use the brakes. I stepped on the brakes as hard as I could, steered for the triangle of space between the right lane and a merging on-ramp, put my parking break on and got the car stopped and in park. Total deja vu.

Once stopped, I made the usual phone calls. E to let him know what happened, Roadside Assistance to get me a tow, my mother who was closest to my location to come get Zena, my Mechanic to let him know I was coming, and the vet to cancel Zena's appointment. Roadside Assistance also contacted the CA highway patrol to send out an officer to make sure my little car didn't get smashed where it stood. LA drivers are not known for their observational skills and I was definitely not on the side of the road. In the time it took to make these quick calls, my car got HOT. Zena was quickly over heating but my power windows were only cracked a bit and I couldn't open a door without risking it being smashed off. When the CHP officer pulled up the first thing I did was ask if we could chill in his air conditioning and he was really nice and happy to oblige.

Although my Roadside Assistance tow truck was on the way, the CHP truck showed up first and elected to get me off the freeway instead of waiting for my truck. Like I said, not the best location to be stopped, even if I wasn't directly in a lane. The CHP officer was nice enough to let Zena ride in his air conditioning while I rode with the tow truck driver and they were able to get me off the next exit and onto a quiet residential street. Thank goodness Zena didn't pee in the officer's car, I was worried but he seemed to hold it together despite being clearly uncomfortable.  A few minutes later my mom showed up to get Zena home and my tow truck arrived to take me to my mechanic. They were able to get my car started, though it did not run happily, and my tow truck followed me to the mechanic to make sure it didn't stall again.

Thus far everyone has different theories as to what went wrong. The tow truck driver thinks it's my alternator, which must have died, causing my car to run off the battery for a handful of minutes before exhausting it and stalling.  E agrees with this theory as well since the alternator makes the most sense. My mechanic isn't sold though, he turned the car on and after listening for a few minutes declared that my car is not firing all of it's cylinders. It's also vibrating really hard at a certain RPM but refused to spit out an error code even though something is clearly wrong. None of that seems like a good indicator of a quick fix, I'm seeing dollar signs already and we won't know more until tomorrow.

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly things can pile up. Here we are, trying to make up our minds about a clinic and gearing up to spend ~40k when both our cars break down. We really don't have the budget to cover expensive repairs or a new (used) car right now. I don't even know what we'd get if we did need a new car. We've talked and talked about getting a nice family car as soon as we're successful with IVF, since both of our cars are fairly small and clearly not super reliable, but what if we buy a big car and our attempts to build our family fail? I'd be stuck with a lovely car with three empty rows to remind me.

I've got everything crossed that whatever is wrong with Sydney is a (fairly) quick and easy fix. Come on universe, we could really use a bone here. 

The Expense of a Wedding

I've come to the conclusion that the idea of putting together a medium size wedding for under 10 grand is absolute lunacy. Everywhere I turn, I run into blown budgets. And not just little budgets. We're talking big bad 25 thousand dollar budgets being replaced by even bigger, badder 35 thousand dollar budgets. How can people do this? 35k is like a down payment on a house, or a luxury car. I feel sick to my stomach thinking about spending 10k on a wedding, but the weird thing about the wedding industry is the way they make it all seem so normal.

Take wedding photographers for example. They're one of the most important wedding expenses, for me at least. Eventually, no one will remember how many floral arrangements you had, how good your food was or whether they liked the cake, but you will hopefully have amazing pictures to remember "your big day". This is a sneaky wedding marketing phrase used to convince nervous brides that this is the single most important day in your life and you must book with them or YOU WILL RUIN IT!. They then turn around and admit that most women barely remember their big day, owing to those nerves that made them book in the first place. Interesting isn't it? Thus, many women would barely remember their big day if it weren't for their amazingly expensive pictures. All of this means you really really really don't wanna cut corners on your photographer. In Los Angeles at least, that means being prepared to shell out a LOT of dough.

The prices range anywhere from 2-3 grand, to 15 grand, with or without albums or prints. Chances are the base prices won't include any actual physical pictures or albums, and to order prints from the photographer you need to be prepared to shell out 6-7 dollars per 4x6. When confronted with this insanity, previously ridiculous prices begin to seem normal, nay, not just normal, but a bargain! 3 grand for two photographers all day, two albums and an engagement session? An absolute steal! Never mind that's almost a third of our total budget, the fact that I refused to spend 3 grand on my first car, and the unsettling notion that that's more than I make in a year sometimes as a student.

Really though, what can you do? You don't wanna have a friend take the photos, and even though I have an amazingly talented photographer brother, I definitely don't want to make him work on my wedding day. And that's just the bare bones. It doesn't even take into account the bad photographers, the vendors who don't show up or who lose your photos or take terrible pictures. Sometimes it feels like planning a wedding is an exercise in avoiding disasters while at the same time asking your loved ones to shell out large quantities of cash.

I know, we could elope, vegas is cheap, yadda yadda. I was never one of those little girls who ever imagined planning her wedding, but strangely I really really want to have this wedding. Blame it on the hormones or whatever, but even though our getting married after 8 years is a little anticlimactic, I really want to do this. I want the big stupid white dress, the overpriced flowers (that hopefully won't be that overpriced since we're buying them from the flower mart in downtown LA) and dammit I want a good photographer.

Has anyone actually done this? Is it possible to have a wedding for 100 guests under 10 grand? Can anyone suggest a good photographer?