Updates

I'm skipping this Saturday's (and obviously last Saturday's) untitled posts simply because I've just become uninspired by them and want to wait until I have fun things to share, instead of a bunch of crap thrown together just to simply post them. Instead I thought I would ramble about things that are going on in our little family.

As per usual for us, when it rains it pours. It never fails that when one thing goes wrong in our family, everything else just starts to crumble slowly like an Angry Birds structure. A couple weeks ago we were notified by mail that Adam's unemployment was going to start being cut by about $125 a week. For those not very good with math, that's $500 a month. For a family that pretty much lives paycheck to paycheck this means something or somethings don't get paid. For us this week it meant groceries and cable. In fact on Monday night Adam fed the kids spaghetti noodles flavored with a packet of french onion soup and we didn't eat. The kids loved it. Thought it was Ramen.

On Tuesday I was driving the hour to Iowa City to take Blake to a doctor appointment at the Children's Hospital and my car overheated. The most awesome part was that I knew when I left the house that we had no money in our bank account and I had a whopping $18 in cash on me. I put $15 of it in my gas tank before we hit the interstate. Now we're sitting there on the shoulder of I-80 and I'm thinking, what the hell am I going to do?? I called our insurance company about our roadside assistance and explained that I needed a tow truck but didn't have the luxury of being able to pay for it and then get reimbursed. She hooked me up with a company that would just bill them for the tow. Thank you kind insurance lady!

So after two very sweaty hours of being stuck on the interstate, the tow truck came and Adam picked Blake and I up to take us home. Adam, also had very little gas in his tank so I gave him the $3 I had left to put in his tank. I figured it could make the difference between us getting back home and getting stuck on the interstate again. While I was digging in my purse I found a hidden eight bucks! Whoohoo!! I snatched the $3 back from Adam, gave him the $8 and took Blake inside the gas station for a much needed bottle of whatever he wanted to drink that didn't have "Monster", "Red Bull" or "Boone's Farm" on the label. He chose the biggest bottle of sweet tea he could find and sucked most of it down before we pulled up in front of the house. Way to dehydrate your six year-old, mom!

That night I talked to a close family member and they were able to loan us some money so we can afford gas and groceries. Thank you kind family member! As far as the car we still don't know what's wrong with it. It's still in the shop. Our mechanic is a friend of the family and we told him the car was being towed to him but that we were not in a hurry for it. It sucks being down to one car but we're making it work.

Today we dropped Emily off with her Girl Scout troop and they went on an overnight camping trip. It's been raining all day, it's supposed to rain all night but they have decent tents and a small cabin so they're making it work. I'm just hoping she doesn't come home with a bad cold or worse.

Tonight we had to pick up a few things from Wal-Mart. We were heading home around 9:00 and had just passed the movie theater. We got to the next intersection and standing there on the corner, in the dark, and the rain were five teenage girls, probably age 14-15. We had a red light and they ran across the street in front of our car. They all stopped in the median in the middle of the road and then, without realizing that traffic was heading into the intersection to turn left and head the opposite way we were heading, they all started running across the street again. A car turned and the first girl ran right after the car. A second girl didn't realize there was another car coming and she ran across the street too. This car just barely, and I mean BARELY missed her. In fact, if she felt the car tap her heel as she ran it wouldn't have surprised me. Adam and I saw it coming and I screamed as the car whizzed past her. All of us just sat there, frozen. The rest of the girls ran across the street laughing and one of them hugged the lucky girl. The worst part is that one of their parents had probably just dropped the girls off at the movies. Who knows where they were headed. Blake was watching all of it from the backseat and was just as freaked out as the rest of us. I'm soooo glad that the worst didn't happen and even more glad it didn't happen in front of my little boy. If I would have been the lady that was driving that car I would have pulled over and freaked out on them. I would have asked for their parents phone numbers so that they knew where they were. If me almost hitting you with my car didn't freak you out, lemme see what happens when you know I'm about to call your dad. Stupid, lucky little girl.