With the sunshine comes some rain...
Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 10:16AM 
The beautiful this week: our new home with all its space for play and movement and breathing and unpacking. Our belongings are no longer busting the seams of all our furniture and every available surface.
The tough: we are skating on thin financial ice. I'm still on partial pay. (Nearly half of my paycheck is going to my company to pay for my benefits during my maternight leave since those don't come out of disability pay. And my disability pay was only 66% pay, so it's been five months since I've had a full paycheck and it's getting very, very difficult to manage - and we still have a month of this partial pay to go.) We are seriously penny pinching, and by that I mean we are squeezing pennies to see if they'll create new pennies. No luck so far.
But then there's the big rain on this sunshiney but broke parade: my car. Last night I stopped at a convenience store to pick up some beverages before meeting up with the hubby and Nate at my in-laws for dinner (When You're Broke Tip: say yes when your in-laws offer dinner). Upon getting back in the car with my beverages, the car wouldn't start. It did this a few weekends ago and has been a bit hesitant since, but we couldn't afford to get it looked at (even though the check engine light has been on for weeks, at least).
Thankfully, I recently renewed our AAA membership, so after having the hubby come pick me up and eating some dinner, I borrowed my sister-in-law's car and headed back to my car and called AAA. No problem, they'll be out right away.
After a few minutes, I decide to get my documents ready and realize... I don't have my current insurance card. The one in my car expired in June. CRAP. My insurance is current (and paid in full, actually), so I call AAA and ask what to do. They cancel my service call and say my only option is to pay full price for the tow.
W. T. F.
So with the service call cancelled, I drive my sister-in-law's car over to my parents' house (less than a mile away), print out a temporary card from the insurance company's website, call AAA back, reschedule the tow, and head back to my car.
Thirty minutes later, a very nice tow truck driver arrives . . . AND DOESN'T EVEN CHECK MY INSURANCE INFORMATION.
O. M. F. G. Gah.
But so he tows my car to my mechanic (after having me sit in it while he raised it up onto the tow bed because "the chains aren't the best and sometimes they slip; so if you feel them start to slip, slam on your brakes" . . . ooookie dokie). I leave a note and my car key for the mechanic, who will look at my car sometime today and let me know what the deal is - what's wrong, the cost, the timing, and so on.
Sigh.
As I sat there waiting for the tow truck, I thought about balance. Is it always that when things seem so good that something bad has to happen to balance it out? Or does the bad happen because I always wait for it to happen? I spent a lot of energy yesterday worrying about our current financial situation; it's tighter and tougher than it's been since our wedding - and I just kept thinking, "Just one financial problem could be a total disaster for us right now." And here we are. Probable disaster.
So I'm turning my energy around. I will try to focus on this all turning out okay since it always has in the past. Somehow, we always make it through. My beautiful sister-in-law is letting me borrow her car to get to work today and tomorrow. My dad said I can borrow his car after that. My mom offered to buy us some groceries and my mother-in-law sent us home with a tray of chicken parmesan and some pasta fagioli.
We don't really want for what we need. We have love and support. We can't deposit it into the bank but it goes a long way toward filling our emotional banks.
car, family, it's not easy, life, money, things that make me sad in Money, family, life 
Reader Comments (3)
Sorry things are tough, I had something great happen a few weeks ago and the first thing I said to Charles was something terrible is about to happen lol. But like you we always seem to make it through and that's what makes us who we are. Good for you for choosing to remember that, I think it's much easier to forget!
Hope the car isn't too awful, if you lived closer I'd offer to have hubs fix it (joys of being married to a grease monkey).
The sad thing is that I'm one member of a grease monkey family. The real problem, though, is time and energy. The problem with the car was the fuel pump, which required that the fuel tank be pulled. Sure, it's something my brother and I have done on Mustangs in the past, but that was also when we were younger and either could afford to take the day off or had PTO hours for it. As far as the energy problem... My job sucks and between the move and my job this week I've barely been able to sit up straight let alone do things like pull out a fuel tank and replace the pump.
Thus it was with great regret that I allowed the Mobile Penguin Unit to be worked on my a licensed mechanic.
I've noticed things tend to be bad in groups, at least in my life. I get turned down for college financial aid, my sister gets mad and stops speaking to me, and my boss calls me into her office for a "talk" all in the same week. Why do things happen like this? I don't know, but I do know it's times like these that I find myself leaning on God and family/friends more, which is a good thing. Maybe we all just need a reminder now and then that we can't do everything on our own.