Ethan Finds a New Home

I think Ethan might be confused.

It's a Barbie house....not an Ethan house!

Blizzard, Endoscopy and Recall...Oh My!

This is the post in which there is absolutely no connection between the three topics being discussed. Consider it fair warning.

First up, no, these pictures aren't a repost from January, although they might as well be.

This is our "new" snow from yesterday. Enough already.

The drifting was a lot worse this time though....there wasn't as much snow...just a ton of wind.

And now, in truly random fashion, I'm going to completely change the subject to: Endoscopy!

Guess who gets to experience that? Yep...yours truly gets to be sedated and have a camera shoved (I mean threaded) down my gut to see what in the world is going on in there. I've been feeling lousy for some time and having what I assumed where panic attacks. I've suffered from them before, though it's been about 9 years since the last one. I've been to the ER three times for chest/stomach pain and even done the treadmill test and everything comes back just fine, so I'm trying to figure out what's wrong...because I still don't feel good. I'm taking an anti-anxiety med but either it's not really working, that's not really my problem or possibly both.

In a little twist, I also suffer from migraines, and have for several years. When I get them, I end up taking far too much ibuprofen and excedrin in an attempt to simply keep functioning and not end up curled in a ball in my bed (which doesn't go over well with the kids). I've long contended that I'm probably giving myself an ulcer, and now I'm fairly certain that I could have one. And so, now we're going to check that out, via endoscopy, on Friday. Dear Andrew gets to escort me to the appointment, handle picking miss Em up from school, and then picking up a still-loopy and somewhat sedated me from my appointment. He's a nice guy.

And finally, in yet another complete subject change, Bekah asked me a while back if I had my recalled van back yet. The short answer is "no". But I'll give you the even more interesting long version...just because.

We dropped off the van back in mid-October, to be inspected for possibly cracks/corrosion on the rear axle. As it turned out, the van did have a crack and had to "grounded" at the dealership until replacement axles were manufacted and installed. We knew it would be at least January, possibly March, before we would get it back.

Well, we haven't heard a single word from Ford (save for the automatically generated reminders to "get an oil change" or "have your scheduled 100,000 mile maintenance performed now"), so I started searching for more info on how much longer we'd be without our van. I found info on the NHTSA website that included all the official internal documents between Ford and the dealership (at least the ones that had to be submitted to the NHTSA). Along the way, I also noticed that there was an investigation into possible corrosion and separation of the front "axle" (because I don't really know what part it is technically speaking).

When I saw that, I knew it was likely that somewhere down the line, the van could be recalled again. Then, about 2 weeks ago, I noticed that the investigation had gotten bumped up to higher level analysis...and I just knew in my gut (the one with the likely ulcer) that it was going to be recalled.

So, it wasn't really that big of a surprise when, innocently perusing the local news website, I found a headline stating that, "Ford Windstar Minivans to be Recalled for Front Sub-frame Corrosion". Yes...my van, still waiting to be fixed from the first recall, has been recalled again.

So I went back to investigating the NHTSA website and read some internal memos from Ford to the dealerships that basically said that if a van has already been "grounded" for the rear axle, please don't install a new axle until the front end has been inspected. So basically, we probably won't bother to fix the van if both parts are broken.

I have no idea if ours is cracked/corroded, but I know what I'd bet. And if that's the case, then I would fully expect that Ford will probably offer to buy back our van, rather than fix it. Which would be fine, except it's completely paid for (ironically, back in October) and what they will offer won't even come close to buying a decent used minivan. Even if they offered Ford incentives (very likely) Ford doesn't make minivans anymore (apparently a good call). The heck of it all is, if Ford had just offered us what they will have paid for our use of the rental vehicle for a likely 6 months, I would have been satisfied. It would have been almost $6000. But we'll never see that.

So, to sum it all up....I hope it stops snowing soon and I hope that if I indeed do have an ulcer, it is found and fixed and some meds prescribed....because at the rate this recall with Ford is going, I'm going need a heavy-duty prescription to prevent the stress from eating right through my stomach.

The End