A day in the life...

The last 48 hours have been rather interesting.

Wednesday began like any other day.

I took Matt to work.

I had a plan for the day.

Things were flowing smoothly.

I was heading up to the church to upload the podcast. 

Coming off a red light, the car wouldn't accelerate.

I hit the gas.

Nothing but spinning. 

Eventually, a loud, hard clunk and then it was in gear and we were good.

Hmm.

Weird.

Maybe a fluke?

Hit another light. (As a side note, I pretty much hit. every. red. light. I. possibly. can., every. time. I. drive. I'm pretty sure it's a skill.)

Same thing happened. 

Praise the Lord, I get to the church.

I know what the problem is.

It's our transmission.

See, in sync with the last post, we've already had transmission problems this year. We thought we fixed them. 


Apparently they weren't fixed.

I texted Matt to let him know we were having issues again.

I uploaded the podcast and spent some time praying over the situation.

I went back out to the car, started it and put it in reverse. 

Nothing.

Hit the gas.

Spinning.

Well, that's new.

Put it in park.

Call Matt.

We discuss a plan.

I'm going to drive it home and park it in the street and we'll go from there.

I let the car roll backwards out of the parking spot since I have no reverse.

Tell God thank you for gravity and the slight incline of the parking lot.

I get to the main road I need to turn onto to head home.

I know I can't accelerate, so I wait for an opportunity where I won't have someone rear-ending me because I can't go over 15.

I've never been so happy to be behind a city bus in my life.

It's not my fault we're going ridiculously slow and stopping every few feet, people. Get mad at the bus.

I make it home.

The rest of the afternoon is spent trying to decide where to take the car and how we're going to do that logistically only having one car.

Matt does some calling and gets a recommendation for a transmission shop. They also give courtesy rides. Sweet.

Matt gets a ride home from work from a friend.

We decide to take the car the next morning.

Matt will get a ride home from the shop and ride his bike to work.

Step one down. 

Back to life.

We're in the process of making dinner. 

Some amazing friends of ours call and ask if they can take us out to dinner. 

Just to be an encouragement to us. 

And it's exactly what we needed. 

Totally an answer to prayer.

More so than any of us realized. 

See, we're out of chicken.

We get our chicken from a local farm and we bake a whole chicken at one time, divide it up into meal-size portions and work off that for meals.

Well, I thought we had some left, but we didn't. I didn't find that out until Thursday.

So when they asked us to dinner on Wednesday, we had been in the process of making tortillas for chicken tacos. I was about 10 minutes away from realizing we had no chicken to make dinner. That might've been too much disappointment for one day.

The Lord provides in so many ways.

Thursday morning, Matt drives the car down to the shop and gets a ride home.

He gets to ride home with one of the owners who tells Matt about how much he loves his job and how their process works and all that. 

Another blessing. We have a peace and confidence that these guys are working on our car.

Matt rides his bike to work.

We wait for a call.

It comes.

Sure enough, it's the transmission.

It has to be rebuilt. $1500-$1600 and no car for a week.

For a one-car family, that's a tough blow.

Time to get creative.

It's like a game.

A challenge, if you will.

Matt's already been riding his bike to and from work most days a week, so that will work for him.

I have lots to do at home. So the fact that I'll be here pretty much all week is not a bad thing.

We can hitch rides to our commitments with other awesome friends.

We even have some friends who will let us borrow their car for our necessary errands. 

I spent some time trying to think of how Matt could bring home a 12-pack of toilet paper on his bike.

Thankfully, we were offered the use of a car so he won't have to ride down S 14th with a 12-pack of toilet paper bungee-corded to his back.

Have I mentioned how much I love my husband and how willing he is to be weird with me?

So all is looking up.

Then, I'm going to make dinner last night and discover the no chicken issue. No ground beef either.

Well, we could have PBJ. 

Or we could order a pizza and have it delivered. 

Which we do. Gotta have some fun when your transmission is shot.

Plus, one pizza works as dinner for two nights, allowing us to have food until we go to the market Saturday morning to get all our stuff. 

Bonus.

Friday morning.

Matt rode his bike to work.

I'm here as usual.

Someone knocks and rings the doorbell.

I have a policy of not answering the door when I'm here by myself. However, I will look out to see if I see a car, in which case I know the person and then I will open the door.

Knocks and rings again.

I peak out the window. 

No car.

I don't go to the door.

Then I hear someone press the doorknob down and the deadbolt catches. 

Um, what!?

Why is someone trying to open our door?

Now I freak a little.

I call Matt and tell him the situation.

While I'm on the phone with Matt, I hear someone messing with something on the side of our house.

The next thing I know, the power goes out.

Too many crime shows.

You know what I'm thinking.

Today is the day I die.

Matt asks if I want him to come home.

I remind him he rode his bike and by the time he gets here, I'll probably be dead.

He says he'd ask to borrow a car.

I tell him the power's back on and Abi's just laying in the backyard not barking, so either it's nothing or these people are really good and brought her some steak in which case they're new BFFs and she'd let them do anything they want.

I wait a while and then decide to open the front door to see if someone had tried to put something on our doorknob.

They did.

A flyer.

Hence the messing with the doorknob.

No idea why they temporarily cut our power.

So I didn't die yet today.

And we're back to day 2 of 7 without a car.