mamajoan

Yesterday Isaac called me "mama" for the first time!! It seems weird that up until now he hasn't had a word for me, but I guess it's kind of like fish not having a word for water, if you know what I mean. Anyway, usually when I go to daycare to pick him up, he gives a huge smile upon catching sight of me, and comes crawling/running over at top speed. But yesterday he said "mama" first! yay! <3

(For a few days now he had been saying a "mamama" that sounded a little more purposeful than just babbles, but I wasn't quite sure. His daycare teachers had made a "family book" out of photos of all the babies in the infant room and their families; the other day they were looking through it with Isaac and when they turned the page to our picture, he pointed at it and said "mama." They wrote this on his chart that day and I was like, "aha, maybe he *is* catching on!")

Anyway, I may soon get sick of hearing him yell my name from the backseat of the car in demanding fashion ;) but for now it's all good! <3

And now for the car update: see the beginning of the saga here and here. The latest is that the seller emailed me saying that the Subaru technicians told him my mechanic would have had to remove the transmission in order to evaluate the clutch, and since he obviously didn't do that, the subtext was, how the hell would he know that the clutch is 70% gone? Apparently the Subaru mechanics did evaluate the clutch somehow and said that it's fine. The seller emailed me a scan of the work report on which they wrote that the "clutch operation and condition checks OK at this time."

I called my mechanic back, and asked him how he evaluated the clutch, and he said that they put strain/stress on it (I assume by either driving it hard, or doing something in the shop to strain the clutch), and observing to see at what point it starts slipping/jumping. So that's how he determined that it was 70-75% worn. And he said that depending on how one uses it, it could last another year or two, or it could go this winter, particularly if there's a lot of snow and so forth. Since I use the clutch a lot for my daily commute -- a lot of slowing, stopping, starting, etc. -- I'm guessing that it would wear out sooner rather than later if it were me driving it.

So I emailed the seller back and explained all of the above, and offered him an amount $1000 less than what he's asking. I figure that I'll go up another couple of hundred bucks if he pushes, but otherwise, I'll just have to cut and run. sigh. Now we wait and see how he responds. So that's the status of that right now.