Day from H-E double hockey sticks !!

So as some of you may know , my van has been out of commission for the past 2 weeks. It needs a really expensive part that we can't afford to replace right now. Not that anyone ever plans for car repairs, but they always seem to hit at the worst possible time and are never cheap. It sucks too, because you are just driving around, minding your own business, ....when wham!! .."CHECK ENGINE" light comes on. So I think ..."Oh I'm sure it's nothing serious, I mean it's running fine. No weird noises or clunks." WRONG!!! It needs something replaced (I'm not being vague here, I don't remember what it was. My husband takes care of that stuff) not just a cheap something. An $1,100 something. Oh and by the way, I shouldn't drive it until that gets fixed. What the heck!!??

So luckily my husband has his car that we can fall back on. He has a Subaru that we got when we first got married.We bought it brand new right off the lot. It was our first big purchase , has been paid off and we love it to tears, however....it's too small for all five of us. I have to really fight hard to fit 3 car seats in the back seat. All of my kids are still in car seats. Let me just say that they are in....but barely.

Let me also point out that my husband works downtown and his business won't kick in for a bus pass or parking permit, so I have to drive him to and from work every day. I have been doing this for the past 7 years, so by now it's no big deal, just a part of my day. But it's safe to say that between shuttling Bug and my husband, we spend a lot of time in the car. Last year I figured it out and on average (Not including days that I have to go to Costco or something) I spend about 2 hours a day everyday driving everyone around.

Anyhoo....my husband calls me about noon and doesn't feel well. We're all still sort of reeling from this weekend's flu. So I drop everything and load up Sunshine and Peanut. I get him and then on the drive home, the car starts to make a noise. Sort of like a pinging noise. Luckily we were about 10 blocks from home so I'm not too worried. But then I stop at a red light. My husbands says " Ha Ha...Wouldn't it suck if the car dies right here?! yeah that would really suck."..........green light. Nothing. turn the key....nothing. "OH SNAP!!! it totally died right here!"


I thank the Lord everyday that I have AAA. It has come in handy more times than I would like to admit. They got me a tow on the way, but you can't take car seats in a tow truck (learned that one the hard way) and I had 2 sleeping kids in the back. So we devise a plan. Since we were so close to home, my husband ran (and I mean literally because the tow truck was on the way) home and got the van (we weren't supost to be driving) so that we could at least get the kids out of there.

Also...if all this wasn't bad enough. it was pouring down rain and I mean cats and dogs. And we were blocking traffic on a busy highway, so everyone who didn't see our hazards on took the liberty to honk and let us know who was #1. Good times :)

So my husband gets the van and we get the kids all transferred over. Our tow truck comes and we had the car looked at. Somehow I ended up with metal in my oil tank and it essentially destroyed my engine. So that car is not just unusable , but totaled. They would have to completely replace the entire engine. So now we have no car at all.

Luckily my mom had a car we could borrow, so we have a loaner. But we are now just going to have to get the van fixed sooner than later. This is one of the frustrations of living off a single income. We really have to make money stretch to support all five of us. We live paycheck to paycheck. So when something broadsides us, we don't have much other choice than to get buried in debt. It's very frustrating. I know most people live off credit cards and get by just fine, but we are trying very hard not to do that.

We are very blessed that my in-laws have agreed to loan us some money to get our repairs done. We really are thankful . Luckily tax season is coming up soon. Maybe we can start again next year :)