Has the time come?

Can I tell you what happened to my car yesterday? Keep in mind this is a 1999 Ford Windstar with 142k miles on it. We're already annoyed with it because the front heater hasn't worked since last fall (yes, we spent all winter without a front heater), the power locks don't work (you have to reach around and unlock the doors by hand), the breaks are really squeaky (you can here us coming down the street from miles away), when it's humid the check engine light comes on for no reason and goes off as the air gets drier, and many other quirky old car things like that. Anyway, keep all that in mind.

We're all dressed in our swim suits to go over to our condo for some swimming yesterday. I leave the house we get to about the round about (less than 1/2 mile from our house) and the AC stops working. It does that sometimes when we accelerate so I didn't think much about it. It usually comes right back on though and it didn't. Then i noticed that the clock and radio weren't working. Then the blinkers stopped. I couldn't roll down the windows or anything. It was still driving though. So I pull into Wal Mart (less than another 1/4 mile) to see if they can check the battery. I had him look and the brake lights weren't working. He told me to go to a mechanic in Spanish Fork so I started heading that way and we start sputtering. I was going probobly 2 miles an hour. Literally. The speed wasn't registering on the speedometer and I really could've walked faster than we were driving. We were all sweating and my 9 month pregnant body felt very very close to passing out which made me nervous. So, I drove with my door half open. I figure I sure wasn't going very fast. I probably could've just hopped out for a breather and gotten back in while the car was still going.

Anyway, we got about half way to the mechanic and we died at a red light. Luckily there was a little grass right off the street and a tree to sit under. I called my car ins because we have free towing and they gave me some phone numbers. The first guy couldn't come for 2-3 hours. The second guy didn't answer his phone. I finally got a hold of someone that could come. (All this calling was done without a phone book or anything so I had to keep calling my dad for numbers). So, we wait for the tow truck. And wait. 30 min later I called to see if they were having trouble finding us. They said that we were next on the list. So we wait and wait. He calls us back about 30-40 min later and says he's more backed up than he thought and we should call this other guy. So I did and we waited about 20 min for him. I was sitting under a tree off the side of the road for about an hour and a half before someone finally came to get us. My friend saw us and stopped and made the kids pb and j sandwiches (they were pretty hungry by this point and she happened to have bread, pb and jam in her car) and a sheriff stopped and parked behind us with his lights on because I was in traffic and had no hazards or blinkers or anything working. So we did get lucky in some respects.

We get towed to the mechanic (which, according to Caleb, was like the coolest thing ever). Turns out it's the alternator. Sure, fine, a few hundred bucks. Which we would probably spend on our junker car if it also didn't' need the heater fixed this fall. We call and price out fixing the heater and it will cost about 1600 bucks. We don't feel like putting $2000 into this car and have it still having all those annoying little quirks.

That was sure making a long story long... We are looking at other cars. We will probably fix this as cheap as we can (not the heater) and try to sell it. I'll keep you all posted on what we decide to do. I just had to write out my annoying story from yesterday and vent. Thanks for listening. You guys are the best.