A couple of weekends ago I dropped my 9 year-old off for his soccer game warm-up and headed to my favorite early morning place, Starbuck’s. I ordered my usual 7P, XH, CH – which is a 7-pump, extra-hot, Chai tea latte. I like my chai tea strong and I like it to stay hot until I am done drinking it… I hate it when my tea gets cold before it’s gone. Little did I know then, that it would become a $450 latte…

I made it out to the car, with my yoghurt in one hand and chai tea latte in the other and McKinley’s green machine drink squarely tucked under my arm. I hop into the front seat, reach to get the green machine drink and I hit the steering wheel with the bottom of my latte, causing the lid to pop off and dump my entire Venti chai tea latte on the center console and both front seats. I screamed for Bryce, who was waiting patiently in the car, to get me a towel from the back of the car. Instead, he threw me a roll of paper towels. OK, not what I was expecting, but that’ll work too.

Sticky sweet chai tea was everywhere – in fact I am still finding remnants of this spill in my car! I handed Bryce a couple of paper towels and the fur trimmed gloves that were now covered in light brown liquid so that he could clean them off… I worked on removing all of the papers from between the seat and cleaning up the window buttons and stick shift; Then floor mat, ash tray, front seats, other floor mat, cup holder, console storage bin, etc… this took quite awhile as I am sure you can imagine by now. I think this was in reality a sign that I needed to clean out my car.

After all this, I went back in to Starbuck’s to get another latte. The guy at the front counter took pity on me and gave me a replacement free of charge, even though I offered to pay for it (which is kind of funny considering I had used my free drink postcard for it originally). I get back into the car and enjoy my latte and soccer game not suspecting what would result from this little mishap.

After McKinley’s game, we continue on with our errands and soccer games. It was much warmer so I went to roll the windows down – nothing, not a blip, no movement. Bryce rolled his window down just fine using the back seat controls. But the front windows don’t budge. The mirrors don’t budge either. I guess I’ll have to see the side of my car for awhile since the driver’s side mirror is pointing down at my door…I get used to sitting up a little taller and wishing I was sitting on a phone book to see out of my other mirror.

My husband, whose super-hero name is FIXOR, took a look at things yesterday (we’ve been out of town for most of the intervening two weeks) to see if he could fix it. He took the console cover off and popped out the electronic panel that contained all of the console controls. Who knew you could do that? Now I do, apparently. He cleaned it all off and he had everything working except the mirrors, they would still not move in a downward direction. Turns out the sticky chai has turned into a sort of gluey substance directly under a place that was not accessible by any of FIXOR’s tools.

Now this, … this is the moment. This is the moment where my $4 latte turned into a $450 latte. It cost a whopping $450 to order a new electronic panel to control my windows and mirrors. OK, it really was a pain in the butt to drive around all week opening my door at drive throughs and to talk to people. But $450? Really??? Yes, really. And here’s the kicker, my latte would have been a lot more than $450 if FIXOR hadn’t provided several hours of trouble shooting, cleaning parts, and labor to order, pick up, and install the new part. Thank you honey! My windows and mirrors now work like a charm!