The episode in which our hero survives the geyser of antifreeze...

When Elizabeth woke up at 5 this morning, she realized that not only had she overslept, but Kathryn was still asleep, and getting her out the door with me at 6 for her bus was going to be difficult. So she sweetly asked if I would drive Kathryn to school. Sure, I said, or at least I must have because I wound up walking to the car at 6:45 with grungy shorts and Kathryn and heading off. In about five minutes, Kathryn and I noticed this awful smell. It was a synthetic-chemical odor coming from the A/C vents, and I had this awful thought:

The refrigerant is leaking. We'll be without a/c for a while, until I can get this into the shop. Lovely.

So I turned off the a/c and, a few minutes later when the mugginess of a Tampa October morning was too much inside the car, I opened up a window. "Dad, it's that awful smell again!" So it was. But I reasoned that I needed the breeze... or I did until I noticed a few puffs of white smoke coming from the hood when we were about 2 miles from Kathryn's school. Then I noticed the oil warning light flickering and the engine running warmer than usual (if not in the red zone), and I had this awful thought:

It's not the refrigerant. It's low oil, which means a leak so soon after an oil change, and I just hope I can get to the gas station on the other side of that road before the engine freezes up.

Well, the light turned green somewhat faster than I did, and we made it into the gas station. A few fumbling moments later, I was peering at the engine-oil dipstick and confirming that there was no problem with the oil. And that's when I saw a stream of white gases coming from the front of the car, and I had this awful thought:

The radiator's leaking.

And what would you do if the radiator's leaking? You would probably wait half an hour until the engine cooled down to open up the radiator cap and add water so you could go somewhere. But I, who am immune to all sorts of things, including common sense where safety is concerned in some circumstances, was sure that I only needed to wait ten minutes. I used the time to grab a large bottle of colored liquid from the convenience store, to replace the antifreeze that I was sure had been lost. And then I opened up the radiator cap.

The fact that I took the minimal precautions of putting my hand in a glove and then putting a few wads of paper towels between the glove and the radiator cap is primarily responsible, along with apparently healthy reflexes, for the fact that I only have the slightest smidgen of a first-degree burn on one edge of my right index finger. Because, the second the spring-latched radiator cap was freed from its prison, it tried to join the satellites already in orbit, boosted by a stream of boiling antifreeze. Too bad for it that the hood was in the way, or I'm sure it would now be singing Hallelujahs with other space flotsam. In any case, I then had this awful thought:

Oh, flargle. Goram radiator. I'm such a smeghead.

Okay, that's three thoughts, and they were pretty reasonable at the time. Kathryn at this point was sure that I have about as much DNA in common with her as a flatworm does, but I persevered and after a decent interval poured the colored fluid into the radiator and went in search of water. The bathroom sink was too shallow to fill up the two empty jugs I now had (starting with a spare empty jug in the trunk), so I asked the staff in the convenience store if they could help this poor idiot, and they did. So, just as I was heading out to the car, I then looked at the newly-refilled jug and noticed that what I had just poured into the radiator was ... washer fluid. And then I had this awful thought:

Blue doesn't go with Gatorade-colored antifreeze at all. Martha Stewart is going to kill me.

The fact that I have lived to tell this tale is proof that Martha Stewart doesn't care about what grungy fathers in Tampa do to their cars and the love and patience of my daughter. I said to heck with the washer fluid, filled up the radiator, put the cap back on, took Kathryn to school only a few minutes tardy (and the staff there fortunately recognized "car problems" as a reason for an excused tardy), and came home at about 8 am. I waited until after rush hour to take the car to the repair shop, arranged for a rental car for two days, and prayed with the technician that it was only a hose leak.

Lo! and behold! It was but a hose leak. No radiator leak. No overheating the engine. But one of the hoses that needs replacing won't get to the shop until tomorrow, so I will need that second day. And we'll be smelling antifreeze for the next month, I know. I'm so glad Elizabeth woke up late this morning, or I wouldn't have discovered the leak until I started the afternoon pickup cycle, by which time handling this would have been a complete mess.

And what's more miraculous, I got two smidgens of work done today after this.

And, yes, you should be laughing at this by now. I had to laugh at myself several times today, or I wouldn't be here now.