It's rained. And rained. And rained some more around here lately. And that's just been the stuff we got off of Tropical Storm Erin. I am very thankful Dean won't be heading our way. I'm sure we'll still feel the backlash of it though. Houston seems to hold up a special magnet to draw storms our way. My grandfather always jokes about the rainy weather down here since they came to visit last year, about how we need an ark to get around. Usually the rain doesn't faze us anymore, but the constant downpours have been a definite frustration.
The rain wouldn't have been such a bother if other things hadn't been happening, too. At least one of the fuel injectors have gone bad on my car. The car rattles, throbs, fights you, and groans at an idle and when you try to accelerate. I had noticed a slight hesitation when I accelerated for the past week or two, but Friday, in the middle of really bad traffic in a really awful downpour, it decided to show its true colors. With all my childhood memories of car troubles and their consequences, I was ready to cry. Natalee heard a few words she should never repeat, to say the least. Thankfully, Matt was able to get the car to settle down a little bit by putting a higher grade gasoline and some fuel injector cleaner into the tank. It doesn't make such a racket now, but it still hums, making sure we don't forget to take it in to the mechanic. Unfortunately, this is something we've had a problem with before. We had one of the fuel injectors replaced with a brand new one this past spring. It makes us wonder if maybe they didn't do a very good job replacing it, or if they didn't replace it with a new one, like we paid them to do. I called up the same mechanic today, hinting at the fact that we brought the car in before for the same problem. They said they couldn't get us in till Wednesday or Thursday. Wonderful, since we're supposed to be heading up to Fort Worth on Thursday. Matt has already taken Friday off as a personal day.
Because of our car troubles now, and because the last few times we've driven up to Fort Worth has caused us car trouble, I asked my dad to rent us a car. Matt and I both felt pretty awkward about it, but Dad has offered to rent us a vehicle before for the trip up there. It would be nice to not have to worry about car troubles for at least one of our trips. Plus money is really tight for us right now, with the semi-annual insurance payment due next month, however much it'll cost to get the car fixed this time around, our anniversary, my birthday, Matt's and Natalee's birthdays, Thanksgiving, and Christmas all coming up. If we did manage to get the car fixed in time to drive up to Fort Worth, it'd really hurt us if something started acting up in the car once we got there, or once we got home, which has happened a lot recently with these trips. We've been staying afloat lately because Matt's been working as much overtime as he can, and we have a little money saved in case of emergency, but it's not very much. And we have my student loan payments and we've been putting money into Natalee's 529 for college every month and Mom's not always regular about paying the credit card... so we really don't have much leeway financially, especially right now with all these future spendings looming. I've even told Matt not to get me anything for my birthday or our anniversary. Right now we can't afford it.
Normally, all this wouldn't get me down much. The car is acting better for the time being, so maybe it won't be as bad as last time we had to take it in to the mechanic. And although money is tight, it almost always is, and I always look forward to the excitement of fall and winter holidays. But I started getting sick Thursday after babysitting my four year old cousin. I thought it was just something I ate, until I started getting really bad cramps Friday night (inconveniently, when the car started acting up). Saturday and Sunday I was taking regular doses of Peptobismal Max and Immodium AD and ibuprofen for the really bad joint pain in my hips and knees, and my GI tract was completely out of whack. I'm feeling better today, thankfully, but my stomach is still very sensitive and sore, and my hips still ache. I think I had some kind of virus that hit my intestines hard for a few days. I'm doing a lot better, but I haven't exactly felt chipper with everything going on.
To top it all off, the ceiling in the bathroom started dripping last night, and Natalee woke up at four a.m., I'm guessing because of gas or her four teeth coming in bothering her. I'm really hoping this doesn't mean she'll be waking up in the middle of the night on a regular basis again. I'm hoping it was a one night thing, and the repairman will be able to fix the leak no problem.
On the bright side of things, Matt has glasses now to help with his bad vision and is pretty healthy. Natalee is in good health aside from the teething pain. She's absolutely wonderful. She loves to go in her room and sit down at the little table that I stacked all her books on and go through them, looking at the pictures, pretending to read them to herself. Everything is "what's that?" from her. She always wants to know about colors and shapes and letters and numbers. She likes to run up and give you hugs and kisses sometimes. She loves to color in the bathtub with her bath crayons and fling bubbles all over or smear them on the tiles. She pretends to talk on the phone, with her little fist as the phone. She's so silly and sweet and smart and adorable. And she's all ours, Matt's and mine. Now that's a happy thought.
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