Doesn’t life have a delightful way of keeping our expectations and egos in check? Last Wednesday, I boarded a plane with my husband and flew to Silicon Valley to meet with the founders and staff of 23andMe, a personal genetics company for whom I’ll be working on a blogging project (more about that to come as details shake out). (P.S.: If, like I did at first, you’re thinking “Personal genetics? That sounds kind of creepy!” then I encourage you to go check out the site. The company is really all about putting your health & heritage information in your hands so you can do (or not do) what you think is best with it. Plus, they have ambitious goals of advancing health research in a way that I found really exciting).

Okay, so back to my week. Wednesday through Friday were jam-packed with fun. First of all, it was 70+ degrees in lovely Palo Alto, where we were staying (it was four degrees when we left Chicago on Wednesday). I met some really talented women and got to hang out with the lovely Jill Asher, co-founder of SVMoms. Everyone was very nice to my husband, who got to tag along for the meals and geek out in Silicon Valley while I was talking business. I listened to some really smart people explain science and genetics and even got to do a science experiment (isolating strawberry DNA). We ate at some fantastic restaurants, and toured the Googleplex for even more healthy, delicious food, a chance to sit on a heated toilet seat (my life is now almost complete) and a chat about potty-training with one of its founders. (perhaps we shouldn’t have leaped so quickly into the “toddler poop” talk; I think we may have scared him away). Two important notes about the Wednesday - Friday portion of my trip:

Liza’s baby is so stinking adorable I almost stowed her in my suitcase and brought her home. No. I’m serious. I totally would have dealt with having two babies 6 months and under just to get to keep her. I think Jon felt the same way.

and

Jill Asher should be crowned the queen of swag bags. They are consistently filled with high-quality things I’ll actually use and love (Highlights from this time around: some absolutely gorgeous personalized stationery from Lobird, a Flip camcorder (can’t wait to use this as my new Mac doesn’t have a memory card reader and I hate dealing with cords and other hookups for traditional camcorders), a 2009 BusyBodyBook and…the topper–a beautiful brown velvet little girl’s jacket from Wati, with pink ribbon trim. I’ve been eyeballing Wati clothes jealously–and have sadly given away a few cute things I picked up over the past couple of years. But now I’ve got a girl on the way for this jacket! Oh, and one more thing I can’t forget–I got my very first pink baby item (it’s true, sadly: I haven’t gone pink shopping yet), an adorably soft pink and brown baby blanket from Lucky Jade.

Okay, so I think you’re getting the picture: warm days, great food, great company, interesting subject matter, a beautiful location…what could be better?

So it was with a great deal of sadness that I boarded the plane Friday, back to real life and subzero temps. We arrived in Chicago late Friday evening to discover that my minivan’s tire had gone flat, and since the spare was frozen/rusted/otherwise totally stuck to the bottom of the van, we’d have to have it towed. Of course, nobody could look at it until 4 PM Saturday, which meant I had to delay getting home by more than a day, and I was really starting to miss my boys. Finally, Sunday morning we picked up the minivan and left, a couple hundred dollars poorer for the tow and new tire. Jon was in his car a half-mile or so ahead of me, and I had just gone through the first set of tolls between Chicago and Indiana when–

CRUNNNNCH!

It felt like it might if you hit rumble strips going 60 MPH, only worse. Actually, it felt as though something had fallen off the car and then I’d run whatever it is over and dragged it a few hundred feet. And then–chugga…chugga…chugga. The car began losing power. Crap! I was in the second lane from the left, and to my right there was a strip of grass (two roads merging) and two more lanes to the shoulder. Luckily, traffic was light on the right hand side, and I somehow managed to coast the minivan to the shoulder before it totally pooped out.

I didn’t get all the way onto the shoulder, though, so I was hanging out into traffic by a few feet. Every time a car passed, the minivan shook. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Jon and–beepbeepbeep. What the…? The call wasn’t going through. I tried five or six more times and again and again, I couldn’t get the call through. Tried my brother. Tried a few other people. Nothing. My brand-new freaking couple-hundred-dollar phone with AT&T service WOULD NOT GET A SIGNAL RIGHT OUTSIDE A MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREA. Can you imagine how I was feeling at this point? Yes, I had an urge to throw the phone into oncoming traffic.

I know you’re supposed to stay with your vehicle when it dies, but after a semi passed so close it rocked the van for 20 seconds afterward, I knew I wasn’t safe. I had to ditch the van. So, feeling sorry for myself, I waited for the traffic to clear, barreled out the door and headed for the shoulder (which was, of course, covered in several feet of snow). Thank goodness I didn’t have the kids with me–I seriously don’t know what I would have done. So I shuffled my almost-eight-months-pregnant body down the shoulder of the toll road, and passing drivers were kind enough to HONK AT ME (I mean, honestly, what’s that about? As though I didn’t know I was walking on the highway? As if they couldn’t see my disabled vehicle a half-mile back?) After I’d waddled along for a quarter-mile or so, a brown 1970s conversion van complete with shag carpeting and some very nice gentlemen inside did pull over and offer me a ride to the next toll booth and use of their cell phone. And of course, I accepted. Sometimes, you just gotta weigh the risks of some nice men and their teenage kid in a vintage van kidnapping you against the risk of walking another mile on a snow-covered highway while passing citizens honk their horns at you and make no attempt to help.

Finally I got hold of Jon. By the time he circled back around and picked me up at the toll building, then the two of us circled back around to meet up with the tow driver, we’d spent about $25 in tolls. And now, we wait to find out what’s wrong with the van. It sounds as though the transmission died, which means we’re at that “Do we pay for a major repair on a 9-year-old vehicle with 170K miles on it or not?” juncture. And it would have been really fantastic if, when we’d finally made it home, I’d found some of my long-overdue checks in the mail…but apparently, it was not to be.

Win some, lose some, right? Though I guess the question I don’t want to ask out loud is: how much payback can I really expect life to hand me to balance out three days of 70-degree weather, yummy California cooking, and all that great swag?