Adventures with Charis and Remus

I've been home from Romania for 4 days now, and it seems like ages ago that I said goodbye to my teammates and shared ten minute hugs and promises of visits in the lobby of our debrief hotel. Coming home, I wasted no time in jumping back into my friends lives and surrounding myself with people. I've spent the majority of my time back with my dear friend Charis, doing everything from eating bagels in Panera to throwing pennies in a fountain at Starbucks. Today, our planned adventure was to journal shop and then plot out songs for the covers we're planning on doing in the near future. Instead, we got to embark on an adventure of a whole other sort.

After a failed attempt to swim this afternoon, we decided it was time to go home, plot some songs out, and break out the dark chocolate peanut butter I had recently purchased but yet to try. This was a treat that was obviously meant t be enjoyed on apples, and my fruit depraved self loved the idea of biting into an apple after a month with barely any fruit. But for the first time in my 17 years of existence, we had no apples in my house. Outraged, Charis and I jumped into Remus, my 12 year old beloved Jeep Cherokee, and headed off to the store in search of apples, bread, and oreos. We successfully purchased these things, put on some Ingrid Michaelson, and headed home to prepare the best afternoon snack anyone had seen in awhile.

Then we hit the intersection.
I hit the gas pedal to go through the light, and suddenly. . . nothing. No movement. Not a bit of it, even as I push the gas medal to the floor. "Oh shoot! Oh shoot shoot shoot! NO REMUS!" I shouted, desperately pushing the pedal as the car behind me honked and Charis motioned for them to go around me. But there was still nothing.
After a panicked phone call to my dad and a report in to AAA, we were on the side of the road waiting on a tow truck to pick my baby up, and my mom to come pick us up so we could sit in an air conditioned car instead of out in the 101 degree, humid North Carolina weather. Luckily, a really sweet old British man stopped and helped us push the car to the side of the road and then my neighbor offered us a ride home. Also, a pretty attractive 20 something year old stopped to see if we needed help as well. Long story short, we ended up canceling the AAA pick up, talking to a cop, and calling a local towing service before going home and finally getting to enjoy the snack we went out to purchase almost 3 hours earlier.
All in all, it was an adventure. Poor Remus is now in the shop, so I'll be driving my parents cars until he comes home, but it's really a blessing that this happened today instead of tomorrow on the highway or if I end up going on a longer trip next week by myself. Looking back on it, it was pretty funny. We took some pictures while waiting and got a song list written up and got to laugh at all the teenagers who passed by and stared at us. Overall, it was a pretty eventful day and gave us a pretty exciting story to tell while adding to my knowledge of car emergencies. At least now I know how to roll a car out of an intersection!