My car is so expensive

My car has failed us again. I just got it back from the shop last night, and now I'm a bit over $700 poorer. I admit that $400 of that was getting all the fluids changed at 50,000 miles, as I'm supposed to. It also nearly overheated Saturday evening, and when I checked it, there were only puddles in the antifreeze reservoir. I added a bottle of pre-mixed, and it still took more. I mixed some more up and put it in.

Then the car wouldn't start in 96 ° F weather on Sunday, but I guess it picked an okay spot to fail us. We had just looked at potential rental property (not in good areas) and were stopping by 7-11 to get treats for the kids for behaving during the boring search for new property. We were in a not-that-bad area between Mr. K's office and our house (also near the gym I go to). When we started it up, it was as though the battery were no longer working. Nothing happened, and even the overhead light didn't go on (it still had when the battery died last week). My roadside service number had a warning that due to the high volume of calls, I'd have at least a 15 to 20 minute wait to reach someone. Since we were using a cell phone, I was afraid of killing the battery. After trying to reach any friends of mine who live in the area, trying to reach a cab company to get the kids out of there with one of us, and finally arranging to have Pop-A-Lock come and try to jump start the car, I went out to the parking lot where Mr. K had the kids, and found some kind person had tried to jump start the car and the motor was running again, but they felt that the car started more from their moving the connection around than from their trying to jump start it.

We took the car straight to the mechanics, stopping by our house long enough to drop Mr. K off so he could take the truck to the mechanics with us to get dropped off so that he could take us all home in the car, and return the car to the mechanics to leave it there and drive his truck home. Meanwhile, we dared not shut off the car's engine. (We play musical cars like this any time we take my car in because we have no other vehicle that will hold us all, and no one around to watch the kids so that just Mr. K and I can go.)

I had several other things I wanted them to do while the car was in. It was supposed to get its safety inspection in September, but since I don't want to take it in again, I had them do that, too. They found a leaking crack in the break cylinder. I'm not sure what that means, but I had them replace it. The engine light has been coming on and then going off. They weren't able to figure out why, and they don't know why my antifreeze level dropped; they couldn't find a leak.

The reason my battery failed me at the 7-11 is because when the new connectors were installed, the guy didn't remove the paint from the wires so the connection was precarious. My mechanic removed the paint from the wires so it won't happen again.

It was a hot day so the mechanic couldn't get my belts to squeak, but I'm sure they will again when the weather is cooler.

I am hoping my car will be fine now. It's going to be seven years old on September 30. N was just a baby when I got it. I'm hoping it will survive one more year. It should; it only has about 51,000 miles on it.