It's not Pretty

Once before, I felt like I had walked into someone else's life.

I had left my apartment to go to a doctor's appointment, ended up in the hospital having a baby before going home, and by the time I went home, "home" was no longer that apartment, but a house we'd bought and had had a nightmare of a time trying to wrench from the prior owners.

Suddenly, I was living in a strange place where I could barely remember where the bedroom was and had (at first) no use for this extra room called a dining room.  On top of that, I was the full-time, no-one-to-hand-him-back-to mother of a real, live baby.

Which is exactly what I'd always wanted, but that didn't prevent it from feeling a little weird at first.

Now that I've said all that, my current situation does not seem all that life-altering.  Which is a relief.

But everything seems to have changed.

I've worked hard in the past few years to get everything in my life to fit into a tidy schedule where the laundry gets done, the gym gets gotten to, and bedtime is early.  I have so many responsibilities (several of them humans) that it really helps to have everything run like clockwork.

A couple of weeks ago, my assignment at work changed.  At the same time, my best friend--with whom I have worked side-by-side for over thirteen years--also changed jobs.  (I'm coping by pretending she's just on another maternity leave.)  And, on the same date, my husband's duties at work AND his schedule changed.

I miss my friend, but I think my husband's schedule change threw things off the most, because it also changed things at home.

By the end of that week, more had changed.

We were driving over the river and through the woods to my brother's house when my husband pointed out that the family van was making a bad sound.  You need to understand that with a family the size of mine, the van is as necessary as any other family member.

The sound got worse.

Before we got home, I convinced him to pull off of the freeway early and drive the rest of the way on side streets.  Yes!  He listened to and followed my driving instructions!  That's how bad the sound was!

That night, I woke up at 2:00 a.m. for what I thought would be a very brief trip out of dreamland.  The house felt cold.  I checked the thermostat.  My husband had turned it down.  That figured, because he had gotten really hot cooking and cooking and cooking and cooking.

When I nudged it back up, I really truly believed that would take care of the problem.

I really did.

A cold hour later, I realized the furnace had never turned on.  I spent the rest of the night shivering, curled up on a heating pad, worrying, and praying.  At one point, I whispered my husband's name into the air just to see if he was already awake.  He wasn't.  I didn't wake him.  No sense both of us not sleeping.

We had already borrowed from every resource we had to cover Christmas and some expenses.  More things than I could count were hanging on the next paycheck.  More things, I was sure, than there would be money to cover.

My mind reeled at what it would take to fix a furnace and a van.

I finally dozed off just long enough to have a nightmare.

Before dawn, I headed out to the gym.  When I got home, I informed my husband we had more problems than he thought.  Fortunately, he got the furnace going.  Relief blew through the house like a warm breeze, and I went back to worrying just about the van.

We drove it to our trusted family mechanic, who pronounced the terminal illness it was harboring.  Just as it would for a real family member, my mind immediately leaped to denial.  "Isn't there a CURE?" I asked desperately.

A few days later, he told us what the "cure" would cost.  It was almost as much as we paid for the van in the first place.

So, now my schedule has changed, too, to match my husband's. We have been learning how to be a one-car family.  This is working out okay for the most part, other than the time we all wanted to go somewhere.

When I was a child, we had some neighbors for a short time who had more children than sense, and whenever the family went to a movie, the kids who got to the car first were the only ones who could go.  Many times, we witnessed the tantrums of children on the sidewalk in front of the house while their little family car pulled away from the curb.

Those are the depths to which we have sunk.

Now, I'm worried about the toll this will take on the "good" car.  We're trying to coordinate things as best we can, but, some days, the car goes to the gym and back, to the schools and back, to both of our places of employment--at least once--then back the other way.  I simply cannot think now about what life would be like if something happened to it.

I usually find a way out of bad situations quickly.  Obtaining this van, in fact, was somewhat of a miracle.

For a long time, we had warnings that both of our vehicles at the time were on their last legs.  I had been driving my husband's car so he could have the van to take the kids to school in.  I remember the day I came home on my lunch hour to deliver the bad news personally.  I'd taken his car to an emissions and inspection place, and they'd handed me a list of ten things that would need to be fixed before that car would pass inspection.

Paul had bought this car brand new, before we met.  "I have good news and bad news," I told him.  "The good news is that you're about to become the owner of a better car."  Fortunately, we were about to receive our tax refund.  We cashed the whole thing and spent one Saturday going around to various dealerships to find a new used car.  We put all our cash down on it, then crossed our fingers that our old van would make it another year.

It made it only a few more months, and then one day, it couldn't make it up the ramp from the kids' school.  The transmission went out.  It literally would not go backward nor forward. We had to leave it there until a tow truck came.

We had not been able to save up much yet, certainly not enough for a van.  And it was, then, too, Christmas time.

"We're paying our tithing first," I told my husband, and he agreed.  We finished paying our tithing for the year in full, then took what we had left--about twenty percent of what we would usually need to buy a used van, to a state auction place.  One of our options there was a somewhat beat up van, two years newer than our old van.  The battery was completely dead, so the staff had to put a new battery in it so we could "test drive" it around the yard.

It wasn't pretty.  But, as we talked about it, we realized that the things that were trashed on this newer van were not the same things that were trashed on the old van.  Perhaps we would own both vans in a few minutes.  We could probably interchange the parts.  We went back inside and told the staff what we could offer for the van.  "Would you let us keep the battery?" I asked.

"For twenty dollars."

It was a deal.  We built a much better van out of the best parts of the two vans, and felt as lucky as we were that that model had been available, that the things that were wrong with it were replaceable with parts from a van we already had, and that they were willing to take our measly funds as payment in full.

But it didn't last as long as we'd hoped it would.

By coincidence, I've been reading stories about pioneer women who had to suffer much greater trials than being limited to one vehicle.  I'm trying to keep my chin up, like I'm sure they would.  It might be spring before we have the funds we need to get out of this pickle. So far, the winter here has been mild.  I'm not looking forward to standing outside waiting for my husband when it's not.

No longer can my life fit into the tidy schedule I'd made for it.  There is no leaving the house for the day hours before dawn and coming back in the very early afternoon to spend time with my children.  The children have rallied marvelously.  But it seems so much time is wasted running back and forth, back and forth.  I'm having trouble getting the things done--like blogging--that I used to be able to do.

I don't mind telling stories on myself that have a humorous side.  I don't mind telling stories of difficulties overcome.  But I've been stuck on this one because I can't yet find my way out of it.