hi, my name is heather and i'm a stay at home mom

Emphasis on the STAY.
Here's our week without a car (so far) in plus and minus...

- have to spend $500 to fix the car just enough to find out if it's okay or if it needs to be fixed more... or if it's even fixable

+ being stuck at home keeps me from spending other money

- forgot something at the grocery store last night? too bad, you're stuck

+ got lots of laundry done

- got lots of snacking done too

+ Caleb and Sawyer both took two-and-a-half-hour naps yesterday... at almost the same time!

- Sawyer, being the active boy his is, is pretty wound up all the time, being stuck at home like this after three weeks of temperatures and wind chill in the single digits. (he's finally being kicked outside to play today in the balmy 35° temperatures!)

+ Sawyer's speech class is canceled tomorrow for teacher inservice... at least I don't have to mess with getting him there

- being stuck at home still sucks

It really wouldn't be all that bad... it wasn't long ago that I was thinking I wanted to go down to a one car family. It's just hard when it's unexpected. Thankfully it's warmed up just enough just in time that we walked Sawyer to school today. And luckily I don't have to worry about or have him miss out on more speech tomorrow. It's just that I had plans for this week and wasn't counting on having to do any and all running around in the evenings when Ryan's home and Caleb has left.
Normally it wouldn't even be such a big deal swinging the one car thing with Ryan's work as he has spent the last two years carpooling with some coworkers... but no one's really working regular hours around there much anymore so they haven't been carpooling basically since the announcements in November.
It's nice in that Ryan's only been spending 5-6 hours at work each day, going in later and usually being home by 2 or 3. He's more flexible to come and go as he pleases, as long as he's there for meetings and getting the work done he needs to be, etc... problem is, that 5-6 hours of the day he's there is the time of day I need a car.

Oh well. We should find out tomorrow whether this five hundred dollar fix is a fix or if we should start figuring out how we're going to afford to buy a car right now. We'll be gone for the next five days, so at least there are no worries about logistics until then...

That's okay. I'll have a few other things to think about while we're gone; these little things called major life decisions.