(no subject)

So. My brother and his family went to the beach this week. They got lucky and were invited to FL to stay in a friend's house while said friend is deployed, so it was a relatively cheap family vacation and all that. On the way home today, they stopped at IKEA in Charlotte. (Idek, I'm sure it was Jamie's idea, but we don't have an IKEA anywhere near here, so whatever.) And the van broke down. (idk if I told yall this or not, but last year, the transmission went out on their van on the way TO the beach, and so they had to rent a van and leave theirs in NC at a garage for the week to be fixed) So Tim and Jamie and five kids (including their 3 month old) were stranded in Charlotte, which is three hours from here, and since they were coming back from vacation, they had maybe a couple hundred dollars left. Anyway, it stressed me out a super amount this afternoon, and I don't have any friends actually IN Charlotte, but I did reach out to my friends that live in Salisbury (which is not far from there) and they are actually out of town this week, so blah. My brother is stubborn, so he had me look up auto parts places near where they were and he walked to get the new alternator for the van. Luckily, their pastor reached out to a church down in NC and so some of the church members there went to meet Tim at Advance and took him back to the car and helped to install the new alternator. So that was a good ending to the day but before that I managed to give myself a panic-attack-induced migraine. Ugh.

Next weekend, my mom is going with my other brother to the beach for a week, and at the end of July, we're going to TN. Hopefully no one else has a vehicle adventure. :)

Related to our TN trip - friend!Amy is currently there with her in-laws (funfun) and her mother-in-law keeps telling me about all these great hiking trails they have there that "you just have to visit when you come!" Um, if I wanted to go hiking, I'd stay home. We live in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We live in a VALLEY. There are seven hike-able summits within a 20-30 minute drive from my house, not to mention a bunch of greenways IN the valley, and the Cascades a short drive away, and all kinds of things. I'm not going out of town to go hiking.

Sidenote: I'm trying to figure out tumblr, lol, so maybe eventually I'll use it for something other than reposting pics of cute animals or something?