Mondays are Mondays

So I wake up on time Monday, which is pretty good due to the lack of sleep with the baby. My schedule has also been thrown off with the 6 days off, work 2 days and 2 days off. But after getting ready with the usual routine I was actually a little early. I decided to wait for my mother in law to show up for a couple of different reasons. One reason is in case Andrew woke up early. Jen can't lift him for a couple weeks now so that's my mother in laws main job, lifting Andrew out of the crib. William was climbing over the side by 2 1/2, but Andrew isn't the mountain climber. The other reason to wait was because I have been having trouble with the garage door. When it gets real cold outside it tends to stop halfway up and close. Finally my mother in law shows up, and my early, actually on time, morning is now at least 5 minutes late (typical for me). So I head out the door and jump into the car. I turn the ignition and the car just does the slow rrrrrr, rrrrrr, rrrrrrr...nothing. Son of a Bi***. The car has been starting a little hard lately. It was hesitating a little bit before catching, but this was dead dead. I jump out and attempt to jump the car with the Jeep. The jumper cables JUST reach the terminals on both cars. I sit there for awhile and try a couple of times and nothing. Lucky for me Jen can't drive yet, William doesn't have school, and my mother in law has all the proper car seats in case she does need to go anywhere, so I take the jeep. I get to work 20 minutes late, so much for being on time. The rest of the day goes relatively well. I am actually pretty busy working on some marketing for a new website/magazine that we are launching.
I get home and decided to take out the battery to have it tested at an auto parts place not too far from my house. There is a bit of a scramble to get the tools together since they have been scattered over the house due to the numerous projects that I have done or are in process of doing. I haven't done work on my own car in years. Back in the day, I was always tinkering with stuff and wasn't too afraid to work on my car, but as I get a little older and the cars get a little more complicated I decided to leave the work to professionals. But a battery I can take care of myself. I get it out of the car, and take a break to eat dinner with the family. After dinner I take the battery over the Auto Zone. I walk into the store with the battery in my hands and just stand there until a guy tells me to place it on the counter. They have a few people in the store so I figure that it might take a while for them to get to my battery. Finally this old guy approaches me and asks if he can help me. I tell him that I need to get my battery tested and point toward the counter and ..... blank stare. I tell him again that I need to get my battery tested and point toward the counter and ... he asks where it is. Yeah its going to be that way. So finally he puts my battery into this tester thing and turns stuff on. I am standing there for a few minutes and finally the old guy tells me that the machine says "charge battery, test again". I ask the old guy what that means, and he says to me in a shitty tone "charge battery, test again". Does that mean the battery is no good? No it means charge battery, test again. Ok Numbnuts I am here because the battery is freakin dead!! How can I charge it if its dead. Finally another guy comes over and is helpful offering to charge the battery for me and help me out with it. He also offers to sell me a new battery, but why would I buy a new battery if it's not the battery, especially if I have to put money into an alternator or starter. I know that the life of this battery is definitely toward the end of it's life (factory installed), but until I hear it from the doctor I am not ready to replace it. Finally I decided to take the battery home, throw it back in the car, and try and jump it again. After a while of jumping it with the jeep I decided to use my battery charger rather than have the jeep run in the garage. My charger is at my mom's house since we used it alot with the corvette and prowler. My brother is at my mom's and runs it over to the house. Of course I press him into helping me move the desk in the Lightning McQueen room (pics coming) . After letting the battery charge for a while I finally get the car to turn over, but it's too late to run it back to the auto parts store for testing, so I just let it run for half an hour and turn it off. It actually started again. We will see what it does when I get home, and run it over for testing tonight.