Just a Click Away

Finally.  After years of cursing finagling my pathetic car key clicker (at least that’s what I call it…is there a more specific term?), I now can click from inside our house and unlock my car!  Can we say happy dance?!  Believe me, there was lots of it last night.  Ask Matt.  I even had a piece of his leftover birthday cake to celebrate.  So did he.  I mean, happy wife, happy life, right?  ; )

So here’s the story.  Four and a half years ago, we became proud owners of a little Nissan Sentra.  While it’s been a pretty steady Freddy, the key clicker has annoyed me to no end from nearly day one.  I always thought it was just rundown, since the buttons are pretty beat up (there are even holes in a few of them…I’m guessing the previous owner experienced much of the same frustration and maybe pressed a tad too hard at times…).  Somewhere along the line I heard that replacement clickers are expensive—as in, upwards of $50—although I never officially looked into it, so that might not even be the case.  Life went on, until baby Liam arrived.  If you’re a mom, you know what I’m about to say.  A baby brings so much joy—and an insane amount of stuff to cart everywhere you go.  I now average three bags on a good day.  Often it’s four, and that’s when I don’t come home with shopping bags.  Basically, trying to wrangle a baby/carrier/diaper bag/breast pump/lunch bag/shopping bags/miscellaneous items that just seems to fall out of the bags/yougetthepicture is enough to drive anyone crazy, but having to carry everything around to the driver’s side in freezing cold weather (since the car manufacturer decided it would be a good idea to only have one key hole from which to unlock the car) to manually unlock the car was the last straw.  You know, the one that broke the mother’s back.  After whining about it for waaay too long, I finally called the Nissan car dealership in town to find out the cost of a replacement clicker.  The man I spoke to on the phone was a bit brusque, but that was actually slightly comforting to me, as he sounded like an older man who knew his stuff.  I grew up around car guys, since my dad owns an automotive shop, and I was looking for a straight answer.  He was certainly the man for the job, since he got down to brass task and immediately told me to hit up Wal-Mart for a new battery, since that was probably the issue.  Without telling me the price of a new clicker or trying to upsell me, he promptly hung up.  I was a bit skeptical, but figured it couldn’t hurt to check with Wally-World. 

Rarely do I venture into Wal-Mart, but I’m happy to report that a kind employee quickly understood my plight, took one glance at the back of my clicker and determined the battery number I needed,

walked me over to the hardware department, and grabbed my exact battery off the spinning rack.  Picture my mouth hanging open in shock when I found myself in the car less than five minutes after walking into the store, and only paying $3.73 to boot!  I showed Matt my treasure as soon as he walked in the door from work, and he popped the clicker apart using a quarter and slid the battery in place. 

Whaalaa!  Good as new. 

If you’re still following along, bless your heart.  I totally get that this is not the most blog-worthy material, but if there is even one lonely soul out there experiencing the same aggravation, I hope you’ll find solace in my story.  Now get thee to Wal-Mart for a battery and start enjoying life again!  Believe me—everything is rosier with a working car key clicker. 

P.S. Did you notice the lovely bowl in the photos above?  My cousin-in-law made them for her wedding!  In fact, she made enough bowls for every single guest at their wedding to take home their bowl as a keepsake—and to top it all off, every single bowl sported a unique design.  We even ate yummy homemade soups out of them at the reception.  Isn’t that such a cool idea?  Now get thee a potting wheel and become a clay artist!  Haha.  Just kidding.  Here’s some eye candy from their big weekend.

My little sis ogling the bowls during set-up.