Not a Simple Saturday

Today started off like most other Saturdays...waking up and heading to Rita's after a quick shower to make ice and get the store ready for the day. Only this time things didn't go quite as planned. I'm not sure any of you know this, but it takes us about 20 minutes to drive to Rita's by using our local highway. Yes 20 minutes going 70 mph. (It technically includes 5-7 minutes of town driving, but still).

Anyway, we were driving down the highway and all of a sudden, I hear Greg say "Wow!". I'm not sure if this means something is coming from behind us, or I wasn't paying attention to the sports radio that he was listening to. I of course think the worst possible scenario (a car is flying up from behind us and about to hit us) so I ask "what?". A few moments later, he says "my temperature gauge sky rocketed". Sure enough I glance over and the guage is ABOVE the red. yikes! So we pull over and call Greg's dad who used to work for a car dealership. He confirmed our suspicions that it probably wasn't good. So my in-laws came and rescued us.

They brought coolant and water along to see if we could quickly diagnose and remedy the situation. While re-filling the coolant, we hear splashing...and look under the car to see it quickly gushing out of the car. So of course, not good. Greg's dad notices that a hose wasn't connected, hence the leaking and therefore why the car was overheating. Without the proper tools we could properly re-attach the hose, so I went on to Rita's in another car while Greg went home to make sure our broken car got home and then he joined me at Rita's later.

We were all pretty sure it was just the hose that needed reconnecting. We were so glad and hoping that would be a quick & cheap fix. Greg and I finished at Rita's and a couple hours came home to find out that the car made it straight to the repair shop to have it checked. However, the other words we heard were...

"It's not good news"

"The car didn't survive"

"I think it's time to call it quits with this car" (from the mechanic)

Turns out the car needs AT LEAST a new head gasket (aka $1,000+). Now normally for people who drive a 14 year old car with 224,000 miles on it, that would be exciting because that means a new car. However for people without real jobs, that isn't at all the case.

So we are now a one-car-family...just not by choice. And trying to figure out what to do next. Thank the Lord school is over and it's summer, so Rita's is really the only place we got separately right now. I wonder what else God has up his sleeve for us.