Toyota Heaven

That's the name of the salvage yard I found yesterday. Eventually. First I followed my google map directions to a residential street in Arlington. The real Toyota Heaven, in all it's chain-metal fence and barking dog glory, is in Kennedale. Duh. In case you don't know, Kennedale is somewhere SE of Fort Worth.

I didn't know, either.

I live NE of Fort Worth. With a detour to Arlington it is quite a trek. And then with my standard can't-drive-back-from-Fort-Worth-without-taking-the-wrong-freeway detour, it took longer than it should have to get back home to immediately chauffeur the girls to and from overlapping activities. My bum was numb.

Anyhoo, I was at Toytoa Heaven to get a seat belt for my car. Because I've been driving around with a non-functional one since the end of summer. At least I think it has been since the end of summer -- it's the back, driver-side belt and it may have been broken for a while before Anna casually mentioned it one day. Not sure.

Why not just order a new one? Well, my friends at Firestone did. That's how we found out that standard replacement belts for my aged car only come in black.

My car is tan inside. Rude.

So I went to the place where Toyotas go to die. And Hondas. Mazdas. Nissans. And Toyota Heaven/Honda Heaven, being no respector of autos, even had a few Acuras and Lexuses. All resting peacefully in various stages of decay, grass growing around their picked-over frames.

There were three Avalons that were close to age of mine. Apparently they had six more last month but those had been so picked over they were crushed. Hmmmm.

Anyway, I found a near-match to my belt and my friends at Firestone have graciously agreed to install it for me.

And I'm grateful. Because we can't even get to church (about 4 minutes away) with the girls sitting that close without bickering.

And we're driving to Tennessee in a few weeks.