A Mommy Story

…you take them both and there you have The Facts of Life.

Sometimes life gives you lemons, and you make lemonade. But sometimes you run out of sugar, so you get just a tiny taste of the sweet, and then a lot of sour.

The good news: remember when our house was broken into back in July? There were no fingerprints, and it looked like the criminal might get away with it, except I noticed a very tiny drop of blood on the curtain that covered the window that was smashed in.

Well, we got a call from the detective on our case yesterday to let us know that curtain proved to be the key. They were able to extract DNA from that tiny blood spot, and they know who did it. They have a name (meaning the guy is a repeat offender, since the prison system already had a record of his DNA), and that person lived nearby at the time of the break-in. So now a warrant is being issued for his arrest, and they are working to track down his current location. We’ll probably never see any of our stuff again, but seeing this guy caught and locked up would at least be justice.

And now the bad: First, money has been tight this month. Very tight, as in pray-the-account-doesn’t-bounce until the next paycheck. However, this was just due to bad timing with some bills, and we figured we’d be back in a better position by the end of the month. But this is not as bad as many – all of our bills are paid every month, and we’ve been making good progress at getting rid of credit card debt, which when finished will make life much more comfortable. As I said over the summer, we’re not drowning financially by any means. More like treading water at the top, hoping for no big waves to pull us under.

And then yesterday morning a financial tsunami wave hit us. Aaron’s car left this world for its next life yesterday morning. He had the oil changed at a quickie oil-change place two weeks ago, and then two days ago the oil light came on and we noticed the car was leaking oil. Figuring they screwed up, Aaron was on his way back to the quickie place to make them fix it, when the engine gave up the ghost and stopped.

We took it to the dealer to have the problem diagnosed. They only know the problem is something wrong with the timing belt (probably due to the engine seizing), and it would cost at least $500 to take apart the engine to find out the exact problem. On the list of possible problems, few are anything but catastrophic for the car, and the cheapest possible problem would be $1300 minimum. If you saw this car, you’d know the car isn’t even worth $1300 at this point (1996 Plymouth Breeze), and any expensive fix would only be a band-aid against future problems.

So now we need a new car, and don’t even have a car that is running to trade in. Plus we have no room in the budget for a car payment. We had planned on the car not making it through 2007, and we were trying to pay off our credit card debt to free up money for a new car. But it died about 6 months too early for our liking. We also can’t simply survive on one car, because we work opposite schedules (overlapping, really) and work in different parts of town, and we don’t live near a bus route. Life is feeling rather like this at the moment.

Forgive me if you don’t hear from me for a few days. We’ve got to spend some time thinking up creative solutions out of this predicament, and go car shopping. And while this is very upsetting at the moment, I know we’ll figure out something – we’re good at being creative, and I’ve been known to squeeze blood from stones. After all, between when I left grad school and got a job, I paid for my rent and bills that month by selling Beanie Babies on eBay. (seriously!)

And in this holiday season, I also remember that there are those far worse off than us. We still have our house and heat, we still have food to eat, and we’re all in good health. In the grand scheme of things, this sucks, but it will get better eventually. We’re very lucky to have as much as we do.

But still. Damn.