Thanks, universe. I think.

At least it was pretty outside today.

I have had this van for almost 2 years now.

At the moment, I have a very tenuous love/hate relationship with it - but leaning more toward the 'hate' side of things. There are some things going wrong with it that are starting to make me nervous, and we're beginning to think about maybe getting rid of it a bit sooner than we had initially thought.

But one of the things about it that I've always enjoyed was the fact that the windshield was intact. The Escort that I had way-back-when had a cracked windshield. The Mom-Mobile that I got after that one had a cracked windshield. The She-Beast (surprise) had a cracked windshield. I have done everything in my power - even dodged flying boulders - to avoid having a cracked windshield on this one.

But it happened today. We were cruising along the highway and *smack* a rock hit the windshield, right in front of The Dude's face. I looked over and might have let out a slightly-louder-than-necessary expletive or two when I saw it. Of course at that point there was nothing that I could do, other than to keep driving.

I dropped The Dude and his mother back off at their house and went straight to the windshield place. I could tell just from looking at it that if I don't do something about it relatively quickly, the cracks are going to spread and I'm going to have to replace the whole thing.

Of course. I was all excited about having a little bit of extra money this month. Not much, but a little. Thanks, universe.

The guy could have fixed it today. I had the money and the time, and he was sitting in his shop, bored. Then he realized that he left his repair kit in his truck. At home. Thirty miles away from the shop. Thanks, universe.

So I'll take it back tomorrow, and hope that the cracks don't increase between now and then because of the cold weather and having to do the 30-mile run to get the kids to school in the morning. Oh, and if you look closely enough, you'll see that there are actually two chips - not just one. Tack an extra $5 onto the charge and about an extra 15-30 minutes onto the repair time for that one because they're a fraction of an inch too far apart to be considered one chip. Thanks, universe.

Great. Now I have to kill an hour sitting in a repair shop in the morning, when I have so many other things to do. Thanks, universe.

Hey, wait. I have an hour to kill. An hour of time where I will have nothing to do and no kids because they'll all be in school. Remember my 70 day plan? Well, it's now down to 67 days - and I now have an hour tomorrow to put toward it.

Hey, thanks, universe!

Perspective. Sometimes we just need to change it.