Could be worse....

Could be worse.

Those three words have been a sort of mantra for me for many years now. Funny thing is that it started as a joke on my first date with Ex1, because we thought we were going to see a country band and it turned out that we were wrong and it was some weird 50's band - but we decided that it "could be worse" and went with it.

Funny.....in so many ways. But I won't go there.

Today though. Today was a day.

It started out with my "low tire pressure" light coming on in the van. I didn't think much of it because I knew that I had a slow leak in one of my back tires. I went to the gas station, put some air in it, thought that it was odd that it wasn't really low enough for the indicator to come on, and continued on my merry way - about 30 miles.

I met up with a friend to go running, and when we were done, she looked at my van and said "um, you have a leak". I looked, and sure enough, my other back tire was almost flat. She followed me to a gas station where I aired it up, and then I stopped at another friend's house to pick up a sander, and then I went to the closest WalHell to get both back tires repaired.

As it turned out, neither tire could be repaired. The one that had the slow leak had a nail jammed in it too close to the sidewall, and the one that was almost flat this morning?

Ha. Yeah. Not sure what it is, but it's metal and it destroyed my tire.

I kept it as a souvenir, because I realized quickly that I was lucky to have driven as far as I did with that thing in my tire. I'm lucky that the tire didn't blow. I'm lucky that I didn't get a flat while out in the middle of nowhere with the kids.

Could be worse.

While I was waiting for them to replace both tires, the lady behind the counter and I chatted a bit. She made a comment about me being lucky, and I agreed as I was checking my credit card balances and doing mental math to figure out the best way to pay for the new ones. Then she said something that - I swear - it was like she was in my head.

"You're lucky that you can afford to replace both of them on the spur of the moment."

I looked at her and said "you know, a couple of years ago, you would have been scraping me off of the floor if you had told me that I had to replace two tires, because I couldn't have done it. I wasn't prepared to spend the money today, but I'm so grateful that I can even it it means things are going to be tight for a few weeks."

Seriously. I sat there, holding that piece of metal in my hand, flipping it over and over again, and instead of being angry or upset about it, I was grateful.

Could be worse.

Tonight..... we had Scouts. We left the house early (with our two shiny new tires) and got stuck by trains and/or malfunctioning railroad crossings 5 times. FIVE TIMES. It was insane. We ended up being about 10 minutes late for the meeting, but we got there. The boys all went outside to play while the adults took care of some business, and long story short - a window on the church got broken.

There were several boys - including mine - who were involved. There was chaos and panic and disorder and finger pointing and drama, but in the end, other than a slight bump on one head there were no injuries. It turned out to only be a storm window, and not one of the 100+ year old stained glass windows. There will be consequences and punishments for all of the boys involved, but in the end, they were all ok. Damage was minimal. A major learning experience was had.

Could be worse.

I seriously think that I'm going to take this piece of metal, drill a hole through it, and turn it into a key chain that I can keep with me all the time, just to remind me.

Could be worse.

My office

Like most people, I'm in a few groups on facebook. There's one group in particular where it seems like we end up inadvertently having a "theme" day every now and then. Someone will post a ridiculous selfie, and then we all do it. Or video updates. Pictures of our kids. Whatever.

Today, I was too busy running around to really pay attention to how it started, but pictures of everyone's offices were being posted. When I saw it, I was actually on my way out the door to the grocery store, and so I posted a picture of my cart as my "office for the day".

When I got done at the store, I had to rush straight to the schools to get the kids, and then home to unload the groceries and start supper. At the same time, I was helping with homework and signing agendas and starting a new grocery list for everything that I forgot to get today.

I was making a mental meal plan for the rest of the week and occasionally pulling out my phone to look at my calendar to try to remember everything else that had to be done. Then I got the kids who were home started on supper while I ran out to pick Emily up from basketball practice, and then started cleaning the kitchen and baking some snacks for lunches and after school.

As it turned out, the kitchen was actually my main office for the day. Or at least for the afternoon and evening.

For whatever reason, I managed to actually be more organized than usual tonight. I got all of the dishes done (putting them in the dishwasher counts as "done" in my book) and made the pancake batter for morning. I put the griddle out so I literally just have to plug it in and start pouring batter for pancakes instead of fumbling around to mix it like I usually do. I packed the majority of the kids' lunches so that all I have to do is make their sandwiches and toss their string cheese into their respective bags and then chase them out into the van.

Theoretically speaking, as long as everyone gets up on time, the morning *should* be fairly easy....although I'm sure that it will fall apart somewhere.

Of course, in the middle of all of this, it was pointed out to me that the bathroom faucet was messed up again. I just replaced the stems in it a few weeks ago and was super proud that it wasn't dripping constantly anymore, and now it's jacked up again. I hope that it's just something that needs to be tightened, but I won't know that until I can shut the water off to the house (because no shut off under the sink) and pull it apart again, so depending on how that goes, my "office" tomorrow will definitely include the bathroom and possibly one or more hardware stores.

Until then......yes, there are bricks putting enough pressure on the handle to keep the water from running all night long.

Don't judge. It's working for now.

And yes, I know, the sink is filthy. Again, don't judge. I'll deal with that later.

I used to have an actual office job. I had to get up early and get dressed every day (luckily girl clothes weren't required, but I still had to look human) and drive 30 miles each way to sit in a cube and push papers and run around the state visiting people to make sure that they were getting the care that they needed. I got paid a decent amount of money and enjoyed what I did for the most part.

Sometimes, I miss that life. I miss getting out and seeing people (even if I didn't like ALL of the people I had to deal with on a regular basis) and having a regular routine.

But then again, I wouldn't trade my "offices" now for any of that. I love that I can be home with my kids at a moment's notice when they need me and that I can go to school functions during the day without having to rearrange an entire work day and get permission from the boss. I can do laundry and grocery shop and fix busted sinks while they're in school, and spend the evenings with them (even if I'm in the kitchen for most of the evening).

The money's not as good, but the value is incredible.

That wasn't supposed to happen

Today started out rough. Daniel started on another vomiting spree sometime in the middle of the night, and kept it up for several hours. The Dude came over at 4:30am as usual so that I could go to work, and I made the decision to take the day off instead. So I got the kids up and ready to go to school, he loaded them up and took them, and I crawled back into bed with Daniel. At some point, The Dude came back and brought some Gatorade and ginger ale - I vaguely remember him coming in to the house and leaving again.

Daniel and I got up around 11:00am and puttered around the house for a bit. I figured that since I had an unexpected day off, I could maybe get some stuff done around the house. The Dude had to be at work at 11:00am, so I knew that I wouldn't be hearing from him for a while.

A little after noon, my phone rang - and it was him. I had a really bad feeling, and as soon as I answered the phone I knew that I was right.

"Babe, I'm headed to the hospital. I fell and I'm pretty sure I broke my wrist."

Crap.

We talked for a few minutes until he got to the hospital, and then the texting started. He kept me updated as things were happening. At 1:13pm, I got the text from him - "And its broken"

Crap.

Crap.

Crap.

I met him at the hospital and took him back to work to fill out paperwork, and then dropped off his prescription and picked Alex up from school. We had to run a couple of errands and then I had to get back here to make supper for the kids. After we were done with that, we made supper for him and his mother and ran that over to their apartment, and then ran a few more errands.

Needless to say, he's not a happy camper right now.

So now we wait until he sees the ortho to find out what the plan is from this point. All I know is that he is miserable and in pain, and I hate to see him like this. I'll be out of town all day tomorrow for a Scout outing with all of the kids, so once we get back I'll be able to check on him and make sure that he's ok. But it looks like he's out of commission for a little while - at least until the pain eases up and he can start to function again.

It could be worse. It could be worse. It could be worse.

It. could. be. worse.

How many times...

....did I sit down today to fold laundry?

Honestly, I lost count.

Non-Stop Dork

I got up this morning and once I got moving, I was on a mission to get some laundry done. I even donned the infamous purple bandana that usually helps to keep me motivated for some weird reason.

But I kept getting distracted. Sometimes it was my own fault, and sometimes it wasn't.

Of course, I kept watching that silly picture of my dishes that I posted last night and was again amazed at the number of people who shared it. I always find it ironic how the dumbest stuff can go viral (remember this foolishness???) but important stuff doesn't. But whatever - it is what it is.

But it also seemed like every time I turned around, the kids were yelling for something. Someone fell off of a bike. A chain fell off of a bike. Someone else fell off of a bike. The chain came off again. Someone is thirsty.  Someone's being mean to someone else. And so it went for most of the afternoon.

Then the kicker.

"Mom, the garage door is broken."

Wait, what?

Sure enough, when I went outside to look, my already ghetto-esque garage door was hanging at a funky angle. I got closer to investigate, and found that one of the wheels had broken and come out of the track, and so it was hanging there by one wheel. Very carefully, I got the door opened the rest of the way and grabbed some tools and pulled the broken wheel off of the door. Cool Neighbor came over to see what I was up to this time, and he went to his garage and pulled out an old wheel to see if it would fit, but of course it didn't. So, the kids and I loaded up in the van and took off to the hardware store.

Yeah. I need to clean that dump up soon.

$10 later, we had a new wheel. A matched set, actually. A little bit of cursing, a few ninja moves to get cobwebs out of my face, and about 30 minutes later and I had both wheels replaced.

In the 2 1/2 years that we've lived here, that door has never opened so easily. And I got it done and was able to get the door closed before some thunderstorms came rolling into the area, so that's always a plus.

But of course, while all of this was happening, I wasn't getting my laundry folded. Instead, it just kept piling up on my bed. So at the moment, Mt. Laundry is sitting behind me, patiently waiting for me to tackle it. And now that it's this late, I have no desire to do it.

However, I'm going to force myself to do it - otherwise I'll be sleeping on the couch, and honestly, I don't want to do that tonight.

Maybe I'll surprise myself and actually get it done though. We'll just have to wait and see.

More fun and games....

A few pictures from yesterday....

We celebrated Jared's 9th birthday with our traditional cake and ice cream...

And we also celebrated Mother's Day with a big dinner with us and The Dude's mother and brother. However, somehow in the chaos we managed to not take a single picture - I'm still not exactly sure how that happened.

Although....I did snap this one right before the food was ready....this would be my dishwasher - that was full of dirty dishes and had just started to run when it decided to crap out and flood the kitchen. Luckily, I noticed it just a few minutes after it started so a handful of dirty towels were enough to soak up the water, but of course that left me with all of the dirty dinner dishes PLUS all of the dirty dishes inside of it that had to be washed. By hand.

So of course by the time I got done washing dishes, I had them piled up on every available flat surface in the kitchen - and I really need to get the rest of them put away - not to mention figure out why my dishwasher decided to spring a leak. Hopefully that's something stupid, but we all know the way that my luck with anything mechanical has been running lately.

I do find it ironic though - that dishwasher was given to me as a Mother's Day gift in about 2001ish - and it died on Mother's Day.



Alex had a Scout meeting tonight, and since we still don't have my van back (maybe tomorrow) we walked - which isn't that big of a deal since it's only about 6 blocks to get there. After the meeting, we decided to buzz over to the library since I had gotten a message that one of the books that they were holding for Emily was there and we had to go get it. We went and got the book, and started walking home. We got within about 2 blocks of home when Alex realized that he had left his Scout book at the library. So we turned around and walked back to get the book, and then turned around again to go home.


By this time, of course Daniel decided that he just couldn't walk another step - so he ended up on my shoulders. Thankfully he's still small enough that I can do that - but it does make tying my own shoes a little bit more difficult. But, that's what kids are for, right?

Fun, in spite of it all.

The Dude and I got to spend most of yesterday together. We're going through some rough stuff right now but in spite of it all we had such a good time together. I promised to talk about some of those - and I need to offset some of the blah that I'm feeling right now anyway.

You might remember when the universe decided to chuck a rock at my windshield. As it turns out, my insurance does NOT cover windshield damage. But, they referred me to a guy who would still fix it for no charge. So I called the guy and scheduled the appointment, and sure enough he does it for free. Can't beat that.

So we drove to Wichita, dropped off the van, and walked to a nearby Chinese restaurant for lunch. I very rarely eat Chinese food - ever since the time that I rang in the New Year by hugging the toilet for about 8 hours after eating some of it. *shudder* But, it was nearby and it was cold, so we didn't want to walk  much farther than that.

The Dude is the King of the Claw Machine - he can't walk past one of those things without putting a couple of quarters into it, and more often than not he walks away with something. I went into the restroom before we left the restaurant, and he handed me this little guy when I walked back out of the door.

While we were in town, we also took both of my sewing machines in to the repair shop. My "new" one just needs to be serviced and adjusted (gee, I wonder why....) and my "old" one needed to be fixed. I had gotten it serviced about a month or so ago, and then just a few days later the tension knob just broke off of it - or so I thought.

We walked into the shop carrying both machines and the repair guy and I were talking about quilting machines and quilt shows as he wrote up my ticket, and I showed him my broken tension knob. He said, "oh, that's not broken!" and started tinkering with it while we talked. After about 10 minutes, he had it reassembled and handed it back to me - at no charge. So instead of being without both of my machines, I'm only missing one of them and I only have to pay to get that one fixed. Score!

From the You Gotta' Love Wichita files.....

I think someone needs to loose their ad agency. Or the ad agency
needs to loose their proofreader.

Thank you so much, local businesses, for clearing your parking lots.
How about doing the same for your sidewalks? I really didn't
appreciate having to climb over 2' high piles of snow to get to where
I needed to go. 

I'm still always amazed at how he and I can have such a good time doing even the most mundane stuff. But from what I understand, that's what relationships are supposed to be like so I shouldn't complain. There are some other stories that I could tell about yesterday - but some of them I am going to keep to myself. I need to be able to have some blackmail material just in case the need ever arises.

Tomorrow's agenda: church. oil change. laundry. cleaning.

Excitement. It never stops.

Battle

So I've been having issues with my dryer. When it works, it works great. But it's gotten to the point that it just randomly stops working. It'll be in the middle of the cycle and just quit.

In its defense, it's getting old. Ex1 and I bought it toward the beginning of our marriage, so I would say that it's probably about 12 years old. And let's face it - with the amount of laundry that I do on a daily basis, it's probably more like 175 in NSM years.

Anyway, I tore it apart today. I took the back off of it and found that the power cord was actually a little loose, and for some reason the ground wire was not attached to the body of the dryer like it was supposed to be. I have no idea how that happened. But it did. So I removed all of the wires, cleaned all of the lint out from the contacts, and put them all back together again - tightly this time.

And then I took the top of it off and cleaned as much of the lint out of the body of the dryer as I could. I don't know if that helped or not, but it certainly didn't hurt it.

I played around with the door switch a bit, and that seems to still be working fine from what I can tell - but at least if that needs to be replaced it looks like it'll be simple to do.

Anyway, I put it back together and I turned it on. And it worked. I ran a load of laundry through it, and it ran through the whole cycle and I didn't have any problems with it - although I'm quite sure that Daniel got tired of me asking him to go stand at the laundry room door and tell me if he could still hear it running or not.

Then I did another load of laundry and tossed it into the dryer. Cautiously confident, I turned it on and walked away. I went back in about 20 minutes later - and it had shut off again.

Colorful language was used. A kick was thrown. And I turned it back on again in the hopes that it will actually continue to run long enough to get that one load dried tonight.

In the meantime, I took the next load out of the washer and put it on the foolproof dryer.

I have one more theory about what might be wrong with it, and I'll deal with that tomorrow. And if I can't get it fixed, I will give up the fight. But I won't be happy about it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ On a positive note though:


Goal for the week: 15 miles. On foot. Walking with maybe a little bit of jogging, depending on how my toe feels once I get back out there again. I need to start focusing on getting ready for the next half-marathon and that is NOT going to happen if I don't get up and get off of my butt.

And now that I have the confirmation and I know that I'm officially registered, I have no choice but to get moving. I should print that out about a dozen times and hang it all over the house - especially on the refrigerator door.

Yikes.

Too much. Just too much.

If you hang around on my facebook page at all, you might have noticed that I decided to hide for a while yesterday. I feel like I owe you an explanation so that you know that we're all ok. Sort of.

Yesterday afternoon, Ex1 called me. He wanted to warn me that Sarah was probably going to have a bit of a rough evening. I could tell from the tone of his voice that it was bad, but I had no way of knowing just how bad it was until he said it.

Without going into too much detail, a woman who has been a mentor to Sarah was in a horrific accident, and her toddler son was killed. The woman and her infant daughter were both injured, with the baby sustaining more serious injuries.

Sarah, obviously, is devastated along with so many of her friends. As a mother, I am completely heartbroken. I don't know what I would do if something like this were to happen to one of my kids. I honestly don't think that I could handle it. I really don't.

As I was getting off of the phone with Ex1, trying to absorb the information that he had just handed me, my phone immediately rang again. This time it was Alex's father, who was calling to let me know that Alex's great-grandfather had passed away the night before. So he came over last evening to tell Alex.

And of course, it doesn't end there. We had to go pick Jared up from basketball practice after supper, and this lovely sight greeted me when I got in the van. So while The Dude's truck is still broken, I'm praying every time that we get into the van that it is just something stupid triggering that stupid light, but we all know how my luck with vehicles goes....needless to say, we need to get this checked out immediately, or we'll be down to no vehicles between the two of us, and that just won't work.

But I have to say this....and I know that I've said it once or twice before. I am so lucky and so grateful to have The Dude in our lives. He has been dealing with 2 broken teeth (when it rains it pours) and has been absolutely miserable and in horrible pain. He had planned to just stay home and crash last night so that he could get up for work this morning, but instead he came over and just hung out with us to keep us company since we were all having such a rough night. He was in no condition to do much of anything, but just having him here made such a big difference. He is definitely my rock.





~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
P.S. I intentionally left out the details of the accident, and the specific relationship that Sarah has with this woman for many reasons, not the least of which is because I don't reveal specifics about our location. Please respect that - and if you know more because you're local and/or you know us - please do not divulge those details here.

Sorting out the pieces

Remember the puzzle that I was talking about last night? Well, my brain still feels like that, but maybe not quite so much. I've been jotting down some ideas here and there, but it seems like any time I come up with a plan for one thing, something else occurs to me.

But the good news is that in general, I'm starting to get some things sorted out in my head. I'm starting to form game plans and figure out how to make things actually happen.

At the same time, when I get stressed or overwhelmed or have too much on my mind, one of the things that I do to deal with it in the moment is to clean. I think it's my subconscious way of maintaining control - if I can't control the crap that's rattling around in my head, at least I can control the crap that's been tossed around in the house, right?

So I tackled the boys' room today.

I don't know what in the world happened in there over the past few days, because I swear it wasn't that bad before - but whatever happened, it's been cleaned up now. And it's not quite as scary as it was to walk in there. I even have most of their laundry done too.

Of course, once I start cleaning, it's never a simple process. I ended up having to basically gut my vacuum to get it to work right, and it still ended up clogged and limping by the time I got that room done. But, it's done for now. And at some point in the (hopefully) near future, the vacuum will be laid to rest and replaced with one that has a better attitude.

By the end of the day I had the boys' room, the bathroom, and the kitchen clean, and had most of the laundry done too. So I really can't complain too much about that. Apparently I need to get stressed and overwhelmed more often, since that's when it seems that I get my best cleaning done.

Then I was cruising around online, looking up some information for another something that I want to get accomplished, and I stumbled upon something that definitely appears to be too good to be true. So, I shot a couple of messages out to some friends who can help me to get more information on that one, and hopefully...... *fingers crossed* ...... this one aspect might work out a little sooner than I had even dreamed. But, I'm not saying anything specific about it yet because I don't want to jinx it.

Yeah, maybe I'm a tad superstitious at times. At this point, I'll take superstition, prayer, hope, luck, pixie dust, karma, and whatever else I can possibly use to make things work out in the best possible way.

Thanks, Murphy. I appreciate it. Not.

Yep, it's been one of those days.

My "good" sewing machine has been throwing fits, so I finally decided to quit fighting with it and busted out the big old one. When I say "big old one" - I'm not exaggerating.

I love this machine. Absolutely love it. I love all 36 pounds of solid metal that runs so smoothly and quietly, compared to the roughness of the 14 pound plastic one. A friend gave it to me years ago, and it's gotten many, many hours of use from me.

It's old. But it worked great - for about an hour. And then it froze. And it's dead. It did this to me once before and it eventually came back to life, but I don't know if that's going to happen this time or not. I think I'm finally going to just have to bite the bullet and take both of them in to get them serviced - as soon as I find someone who will do it and not charge an arm and a leg for it.

So now I'm stuck with no machine to use - but thanks to a plea on facebook, a friend is going to loan me her machine. I'm going to take off as soon as I get the boys to school in the morning and head to Wichita to get it from her and hopefully, it will work *crossing fingers*. I'm running out of time to get this thing done!

On top of that, the ceiling light in my laundry room decided to quit working today. No, it's not just burned out - something's up with the socket. So I have to call the landlord and see if I can get him out here to fix it, because of course, that's the only light source in that room.

However, in an effort to not be completely and totally negative tonight....

I did manage to get out and walk about 4.5 miles today. Just walking, not at speed or anything, but I got out there and did it. Now, if I can just keep that up....

On one of my walks, I went to get the boys from school. We were walking back with a little girl who is Alex's age (and her mother and little brother) and as we were crossing the bridge over the local (dried up) creek, something caught my eye. I looked down into the puddle that used to be the creek (seriously, it's about 3" deep at most) and sure enough, there was a critter down there. We all stopped and watched him moving around for a few minutes, and then walked down off of the bridge and to the water's edge to see if we could see him closer, but he had disappeared. He was a good sized one too - probably about 6" long.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love this camera? I took that picture from the bridge above the water. I'm not sure how tall it is, but that crawdad was probably about 20-25' away from us and I still managed to get that picture of it.

So....it definitely wasn't the most stellar day ever - but there have been worse.

Random shots - because my computer is stupid.

I am having some major problems with my computer right now, so I'm just going to toss up a couple of random pictures from the past few days - partially because I've been meaning to post them, and partially just to see if I *can* post anything.

This computer is on the verge of being drop-kicked through the window. Seriously.

Sarah's newly patched (again) kneepads for volleyball. I swear we are going to make them last for one more month...

The boys found a friend to play with during Sarah's games the other night. Too bad this little girl wasn't there for the entire 4 hours, because they got really bored after she left.

Emily's first games (yesterday). She's in the back right, just in front of the line judge in the orange shirt. They won one match and lost one.

Daniel tried so hard to watch part of the race with me last night, but he just didn't make it.

Promotion Sunday at church today. Jared received his Bible engraved with his name. They do this for all of the third graders every year - this year, he was the only one in the entire church!
Hopefully, I'll figure out what is going on with this stupid computer, and then I can get back to normal again (whatever normal is around here)...but for now, I'm just going to see if I can even post this or not.

Pool party....sunset....and other stuff.

The kids were all in a summer reading program through our local library, and for finishing all of the requirements for that, they earned tickets to go to a pool party last night.

Unfortunately, although Jared earned the ticket, he couldn't go. Remember the other day when we all went plum picking? Somehow he apparently managed to find a patch of poison ivy. And apparently he lifted his shirt and rolled around in it. OK, maybe not, but that's what it looks like. He's miserable, and he's covered in the stuff, so he didn't get to go swimming.

That's Emily coming down the slide.

Wow. They're actually getting along with each other.

Alex got 2 nosebleeds - one as soon as we walked in, and one as soon as his feet touched the water. The lifeguards felt bad for him and gave him a snowcone. :)

They love this frog slide.

And then of course, I had to start playing with the effects on my phone...

When we got done at the pool party, I had to take the girls back over to Ex1's house. On the way back, the sunset was gorgeous - so I couldn't resist taking pictures. And of course, I had to play with the effects on my phone again. Hey, it was a dirt road with no traffic - I wasn't being stupid.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Now, the other stuff.

I feel weird even talking about this. I've vented already about the situation with my van. I looked at a couple of other options today - the garage that I usually go to used to be able to do payment arrangements - but they don't anymore. And they used to have a credit card deal for big repairs - well, they still do, but again, my credit wasn't good enough to get it. So while I was using The Dude's van to take his mother to the doctor, he and a friend of ours went down to the dealership and towed my van back home. So it's sitting in my backyard again, just waiting for a new transmission.

I've had a bunch of people who have asked how they can help. And this is hard for me, because I don't like to ask for help. Not for me, anyway. I can ask for help for other people all day long, but I don't like to do it for myself. I look at it as "I got myself into this mess and I can get myself out of it".

But frankly, I'm kind of stuck right now. School starts in just over 2 weeks. I have to run kids back and forth every day. I can walk Alex and Daniel to school (especially since they'll be in the same building this year *happy dance*) but the older 3 go to school 13 miles from here. The Dude just started a new job, and he needs to get back and forth to work. It's going to be too much for both of us to handle with only one vehicle. Add to that the fact that my van isn't even paid off yet, and you'll see some of my frustration. I have no choice but to fix it.

The good news is this though...my garage gave me a better estimate than the dealership (go figure). And just to prove it....(Sorry, but I blocked out the identifying stuff. I might not be totally anonymous, but I'm not going to just hand out all of my personal info, you know?)

This is a local garage, who I trust. They've done 95% of the work on my vehicles over the past 8-ish years and I've never had a problem with them so I feel confident going there. Plus, they're local - so if there's an issue, it'll be easy to get it back there to get it fixed again.

Anyway, like I said, people have asked how they can help. If you want to throw a few bucks into the "Transmission Fund" you can send it via PayPal to non-stopmom(at)hotmail(dot)com.

And before anyone says that I'm looking for a handout - oh hell, if you're going to say it, just say it. I can't change your opinion of me. Just know that I am doing everything in my power to get the money myself. I have a few odd jobs lined up and I'll be selling anything that I can sell and taking orders for stuff and going through all of my junk to see what can be sold at a friend's garage sale in 2 weeks. I'm doing what I can, and honestly, if this had happened at the beginning of the summer, I wouldn't be so stressed - but with school starting, the pressure is mounting.

So if you want to help, great. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I honestly do, and I appreciate it.

If you can't help, that's ok. I understand. Honestly, I do.

And if you think that I'm a worthless piece of trash for even putting this out there, that's ok too. I've been called worse. Really.

Just know that I will continue to pay it forward, in any way that I possibly can.

More plum picking. And a vent.

The kids and I went out yesterday to pick more sand plums. It's rare that I can get them to agree to go - they don't like to do it, but yesterday, they were willing so I jumped at the chance! They actually did seem to enjoy it, although there was some whining and complaining by the end of it. But in their defense, it was hot, and we did a lot of walking and exploring.

One patch that we found was a little bit trickier to access - and this is just one of the reasons why long sleeves and long pants are mandatory attire for sand plum picking!!!

I think we spent about 2 hours out there, and we ended up with just shy of 18 pounds of fruit this time. There is still a ton out there to be picked, but I think we're going to wait another 1-2 weeks before we go out again to give more of it a chance to ripen.

I'm planning on doing an entire blog with the step-by-step directions on how to make the jelly - I tried to take pictures the other night when I was making the juice but I'm having issues since my real camera died. My phone takes great pictures outside, but in inside light it just plain sucks. The Dude and I priced cameras today, but I just can't justify spending the money on one right now so I'm going to hold off on that purchase for a bit.

Which leads me to this....

I've debated saying something. Then I talked myself out of it. But at the same time, I feel like I need to just say it and get it out of my system.

I'm just having a hard time right now. The stress of trying to get my van fixed is really getting to me, and I'm really frustrated. After getting a second opinion on it, it was determined that it is indeed the transmission, and about the only way to fix it is to replace it.

Yes, we could get a junkyard transmission, but that might only last a month and then I could be back in the same boat again. There are no guarantees with those, but I agree that the prices can't be beat. So we are pricing new ones so that there is at least a fighting chance that it'll last a few years, plus it'll have a warranty in case something goes south again.

We're looking at $3000-3500 to get it replaced. I still owe on the van, so I pretty much *have* to fix it.

I tried to get the warranty people to work with me, since it's only 609 miles out of warranty - they refused.
I looked into refinancing it to get the money for the repair, and was shot down.
I talked to the dealership about working out financing or payment plans there - no luck.
I applied for a loan at my bank - denied.
I bought a lottery ticket - just one - and yeah, well, we all know how that worked out.

I'm in a weird place with my credit. It is way better than it was a couple of years ago, but it's not good enough to qualify for much of anything. A cosigner won't help either - I already looked into that option.

So needless to say, I'm frustrated. I'm angry.

I'm depressed. There. I said it.

I just want to get someone to watch the kids for a day or two so I can go and curl up in the fetal position on my bed and cry and get it out of my system and get over it. But of course, that's not an option. Life must go on, van or not.

Instead, I will work my ass off to get things done around the house, and I will get all of these sand plums turned into jelly, and I will get all of the laundry and cleaning done and I will take care of my kids.

I'm not posting about this to get pity. I'm not looking for a handout or for atta-girls. I just need to get it out somewhere before I lose what little bit is left of my mind. I know that it's all going to work out at some point, and I know that there's some sort of big life lesson to be learned here. I just haven't figured out what it is yet. I'm trying to be patient and I'm trying to remain optimistic, but sometimes it's really hard to do.

So for now, I think I'm going to go figure out something for supper for the kids, and then I'm going to attempt to relax.

We'll see how that goes.