Bonus Post: Cars

Cars.

I know I said no post until after the move. But I thought you might find this readable.

In nine days we are driving three vehicles 1700 miles, ten hours a day for three straight days. This concerns me. Susan's car just turned ten. My car could probably apply for social security benefits, and it just passed 160,000 miles. So in preparation for this trip we have been taking our cars to the shop for the last many months.

Here's a basic summary.

May-Replace the belts in Christopher's car, and not finish all the work because there's more than we can afford.

June-Repair Susan's A/C and get a full tune-up. Also save up money so we can finish fixing Christopher's car. Also Christopher's car starts squealing every time it starts.

July-Finish the work on Christopher's car that suddenly appeared last month, and finish all the stuff we couldn't afford before.

So we take mine back in for July, and they give us the estimate and we breathe a ginormous sigh of relief because it is exactly within our precarious budget.

Then on Thursday, Susan decides to go to work, which seems like a good idea at the time and her car is kaputz. My car is still in the shop, so we get our neighbor to help us jump start the car, and jump and jump and nothing. So we had to tow it into the shop. Now lucky of luckies when we get there and I walk in the gal at the desk says, "Oh, we just finished your car, I haven't even called you yet." Phew! So instead of walking home from the shop, we can take my car, which also means Susan can go directly off to work. The next day, Friday, they call us about 30 minutes before they close for the weekend. The trouble with Susan's car was just a starter relay, a relatively cheap piece. I said they could go ahead and do the repair, and the gal at the shop, who I've gotten to be very close with over the last several months, says she knew I'd say that and they had already gotten the piece in. So they installed it and we rushed off to pick up the car before they closed.

So I'm not sure if I should feel cursed: two new car problems in the two months before we're trying to make an expensive move with said cars, or if I should feel blessed: all our car problems have so far occurred before the trip and none have destroyed our finances yet.

I pick blessed because I don't want to think about the things I would be getting cursed for.