When it rains it pours!

If we just fast forward into current time, I’ve been successfully working from home for the past 14 months, and each time I go to start working and I hear kids fighting or crying… I sit there and wonder WHAT IN THE HECK WAS I THINKING?!?! Now don’t get me wrong, I love being home with my kids, but staying home all day with them, working all day with them home and trying to cook and clean for everyone all the time. Who do they think I am, Super Woman? I think even Super Woman herself would struggle with raising a young family and still have the weight of the world on her shoulders. That’s certainly how I feel.

I’d like to think I live my life in controlled ciaos but that is just simply not true. It’s time to be honest with myself, my life is just ciaos. Between getting my oldest up, dressed, fed and ready for school, I also have my husband that requires the same from me. Then you throw in a grumpy 2 year old that thinks she runs the world and is in the process of potty training, then my poor little boy who gets stuck right in the middle of it all… and all the while through this, I’m supposed to be working…. Brings me back again to the question, what the heck was I thinking?
I hear other mothers telling their stories about how perfect their kids are, or how their husband does the dishes, cooks or cleans… and I have to wonder to myself, can they really have it that easy? Honestly, I find it hard to believe that any family with young children doesn’t go through the same hardships as I myself do.

Now, I do understand that having a husband that works, coaches 3 soccer teams and plays on a coed team himself that he is going to be gone a lot. And I wouldn’t take his soccer away from him, it’s something that he loves and it makes him happy and frankly he is very good at it. Throw in my son who is also playing now, needless to say my husband is gone from 7:30am-9pm Monday – Saturday.

Over the year I’ve learned how to do a lot of repair work on the house and cars myself and thank god for that! When it rains it pours… Last Wednesday my truck was stolen, I love my truck. 8 seats meant that none of the 3 kids had to sit next to each other. Not sitting next to each other meant far less fighting in the car.

Bummer right? It became much more of a bummer when I realized that I had passed on the rental coverage on my insurance to save a whopping $15 a month. At the time I was thinking, Oh I won’t get into an accident that is my fault. If anything, someone will hit me and their insurance will cover a rental for us. It NEVER crossed my mind that one of our cars would get stolen.

So here I sit with a husband that NEEDS to use the car, but is gone from 7:30 in the morning, until its past bed time in the house, and I am left stuck in the house with no way to leave. It can’t get any worse, right? Famous last words! I go to use the other can on Sunday (the 1 day that it is available for my use) and the darn thing won’t start, the battery is dead. No big deal right, I know how to jump start a car! I open the trunk to get my jumper cables… and they are gone! I call my husband to ask where they are and why they are not in the car, (and get this!) he tells me he took them out because he hasn’t needed them and had to make room for his soccer equipment. What does he mean he hasn’t needed them? I thought that just like a spare tire, you hope you never have to use them but you keep them in the car just in case you ever do!

So now I am stuck in the parking lot of the grocery store with a trunk full of food that will go bad, with no jumper cables to jump my car that has a dead battery. I start making calls to have someone come up to me and no one is answering, so I ask a couple of people leaving if they can jump me. And what do they ask me? They ask if I have any cables because they don’t have any! Like I said when it rains it pours.

I did eventually get a hold of one of my neighbors and he came and got me. Jumped the car and on the way home the gas light comes on. I opt to not take the risk of stopping for gas and to just head over to my in-laws house because I know he has a battery charger. I stopped at a Circle K on the way and left the car running while I ran in to get a few bags of ice, I have to save my food somehow! Long story short, I get there, fully charge my battery and go home. I leave the car running while I take the food inside and then go back out and disconnect the battery while the car is still running. Car stays running so I can check a bad alternator off the list of what wrong. I turn the car off and leave the battery disconnected. No problem is, it’s Sunday afternoon and all the auto parts stores are closed already. I have to figure out how at 7:30 in the morning, I’m going to find a neighbor that can jump start the car for my husband, I don’t know if the battery is going to hold a charge and still be good in the morning.

Morning comes and I head out early to connect the battery up and see if the car will start. I cross all my finger and toes and try to start it up. You can hear it try to turn over and then it sounds as if someone has pulled a plug and everything starts to slowly shut off. Crap now it’s 6 in the morn and I have to sit out here and wait for a neighbor to come out and hope they can jump it. Luckily just before 7 rolls around one of them comes out and even asked if I needed help, as I sit there cleaning the battery connectors to make sure it’s not an issue with them. Thank God is all I could think. She gives me a jump and I have to let the car sit there running while I wait for my husband to get out the door for work, knowing full and well that it is almost out of gas. Send my husband off with a gas can so he can fill it up on the way to work and hope that he doesn’t run out of gas on the way.

A couple hours after I get him off to work and my oldest daughter off to school, I get a call from our bank… someone was trying to buy a $6,000 TV system from best buy with my debit card! Bank puts a hold on the account and deactivates the cards… how are we supposed to go get a new battery for the car if I have no way of getting to the bank to pull out money, my husband can’t make it to the bank during business hours and we have working debit cards at the moment. Will this madness of a week never end?