My boy is hurting big-time with pain in his ear. This happened before when he got a cold, so I don’t know if it’s sinus pressure or an ear infection, but he was in agony tonight. Just nonstop crying. And he fought tooth and nail to take liquid pain reliever. I had to hold him down while his Dad shoved a syringe into his mouth. He was hyperventilating and just out of his mind. He fought going to bed early and has woken up a few times crying. It’s a terrible feeling.
He’s been sleeping fitfully but is settled for now.
We had a Christmas party planned tomorrow, but I’m doubtful.
As hard as it is, you know you are doing the right thing. She’ll be in the arms of the people who love her most as she leaves this world. The rest of us should be so lucky.
Never let the loss of her now overshadow the love you’ve shared before.
I don’t know what it (AAA) does. I’ve been driving for 50 years, and have never (that I know of) needed anything I think they provide.
AFAIK all they do is charge a fee so you feel somehow vaguely “protected” against something (???). A something that simply never happens.
I totally want to hear about @Spice_Weasel’s octopus cookie jar and the argument. I also want one.
I used to have a pink pig cookie jar. The head held a small battery-powered light-activated sound gizmo that would make loud oinking noises whenever you took the lid off. It was awesome. We never argued about it though; we both loved it.
Free towing, and roadside assistance if you run out of gas, need a jump, get locked out, etc. (not all of it free). I think you get 4 free tows a year, distance depending on the plan.
You don’t know what it is they do, yet you proclaim they’re out of date?
Nice! I wish I qualified for USAA. As I said earlier, it’s not much more for me on my insurance, last time I checked it was $3.94/mo.
A few months ago, I found a flat tire while parked at work. I called the insurance phone number, and they sent a fellow out to fix the flat (free of charge). He told me he had his own business and contracted with insurance companies for side jobs. His business name? “Better Call Paul”.
My car broke down once and I had to pay for a tow truck to get it to the shop. My dad’s wife scolded me that I should have had a membership to AAA, then I wouldn’t have had to pay for the tow truck.
I asked her how much it cost her to be a member, and she said it was about $100 a year.
I then said that the tow truck cost me $100. I’d had the car for 14 years at that point. And that was the only time it had needed to be towed. So I’d have effectively paid $1400 for one tow.
We don’t have AAA in Canada, but we have CAA, and the two are affiliated, so if I’m a CAA member, I’m covered for the above in Canada and the US.
In addition to the above, though, the local CAA office gives me a place to renew my license and registration, and buy home and auto insurance. It has all the road maps and Trip-Tiks you could want (for those of us who prefer not to use a phone app), and a travel agency that can even sell me luggage. It can take passport photos, driver’s license photos, and can deal with land titles. There are a few other things, but I can’t think of them right now. Anyway, there’s a lot more to my CAA membership than just gas and towing and jump starts.
If AAA isn’t offering all that, I can see why one might think it’s out of date.
It may well offer those in the US. I don’t know, as I’ve only used it for emergency roadside assistance. When my foster son’s car broke down on the shoulder of the freeway in a terrible, uncharacteristic blizzard with him not having warm enough clothes for a prolonged wait, I was able to get him a tow with no hassle - guessing back around 2012.
Interesting, because just about every six months or so I get a mailing from CAA trying to entice me to join, complete with an embossed plastic membership card that becomes active just as soon as you send them money. So far I’ve resisted, although I know people who believe in it and think it’s a good value.
The other benefits notwithstanding, I’d think of it mainly as protection for when you’re stranded on the side of the road with a flat or a breakdown, but those things are exceedingly rare. I’ve been driving at least as long as @LSLGuy who says it’s never happened to him at all. It’s happened to me three times that I can recall, although all three were the same vehicle. I never thought of it as particularly unreliable (I had it more than 13 years) but relatively speaking I guess it was. Once the engine overheated due to a fan failure, another time the water pump failed, and one exciting time I had a front-tire blowout on the freeway * (besides its own mechanical problems, this vehicle featured Goodyear tires of a particular type that brought new meaning to the phrase “piece of shit”).
But aside from that, I’ve never needed roadside assistance in a lifetime of driving, so it’s hard for me to justify a CAA membership. I must say, though, that one of the non-obvious benefits is that the tow truck business is so rife with scammers that anything that avoids having to deal with them is a good thing.
* - To anyone who might be tempted to ask the obvious question, “why didn’t you just change out the flat yourself?”, I say that you don’t have a full appreciation for the phenomenon known as The Luck of Wolfpup. When and where do you suppose this blowout happened? It was the middle of the night, in near total darkness, in the middle of a construction zone with no actual shoulder to pull over on, on a very busy highway with traffic going by at supersonic speeds just inches away. No, I’m not going to change a flat in those circumstances! Also, now that I think of it, this was the vehicle where the spare tire was rust-welded to the underbody, so there was no spare anyway. Yeah, not the greatest car in the world in its final days!
I only have needed roadside assistance once in my life, and it was in Europe. I had taken the family on a road trip from Frankfurt to London in my '85 Ford station wagon. On the way back (somewhere in Belgium I think) the exhaust pipe rotted through and was dragging on the pavement emitting a shower of sparks. I pulled over and crawled under the car but there was nothing I could do, so there we sat in the middle of nowhere, with night coming on. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a small panel truck pull up behind me. It was an ADAC vehicle (the Euro version of AAA). They actively cruise the highways looking for people in distress, apparently. I had gotten that coverage because it was only $15/year. A little guy jumped out of the truck and I used two of the few German words I knew: “Auspuffen kaput!” He was able to put a temporary clamp on the thing and get us underway in no time.
I’ve been a AAA member for a long time. I get my car insurance through them and am very happy with the price. If I get a flat tire or dead battery, I call and let them take care of it.
Worth the money to me. Sure, I can change a tire myself, but at 2 am in a snowstorm, I’d rather let someone else do it.
More precisely, I don’t know exactly what all they do. The basic idea of roadside assist I get.
That is much more my experience. I don’t run out of gas or lock myself out. I can change a tire, and have had only a couple of tow-truck events in about 50 years. One of which was after a crash that totaled the car. I’ve driven some real clunkers over those years too so it’s not just a matter of new cars don’t malfunction much. When I traded in my 3rd-ago car I got $500 for it. Not a young or low-mileage vehicle by any stretch.
It is true that cars made after about 2010 malfunction much much less than e.g. 1970s cars did when at a similar age/mileage. So IMO as @Atamasama points out, lots of people are massively overpaying now to insure against relatively minor and quite rare expenses. Might’ve been a great deal in 1975.
