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Ever since “escaping from the cubicle” car repairs have plagued me. I think within the first12 months of striking out on my own, I put about $3,000 that I really couldn’t afford into my car and my wife’s car.  Luckily we’ve been OK for some time now and our cars are both paid off. However, the gremlins struck again this past weekend.

I was at soccer practice and Anke was running errands with G when her engine light came on. As luck would have it I checked my cell during a water break and saw that Anke called. Normally Anke knows better than to call during soccer, but she is my wife and is one of the few people that can interrupt me at anytime.

Anyway, she ended up waiting 2 hours for the tow truck! Yuck. To her credit she maintained her good spirits for most of it.

Today our preferred shop called and said that if it wasn’t simple, the repair could take several days because they are swamped. I’m thinking, “Oh terrific,” because we just played rotating child care for the past two weeks and now we’re a one car family!

The rotating child care thing was interesting. G’s summer preschool ended and he had a two week “vacation” between then and the start of the fall session. That meant that Anke and I had to work a flexible schedule, coordinating carefully with Grandma and Grandpa so we could both get some work done and honor important appointments. It was literally, “I got him for 3 hours, then I’ll drop him off with Grandma so they can go swimming, and then can you watch him until you go riding?”

Children really make your priorities clear, but they doesn’t mean that you aren’t hankering to move some projects forward and get stressed if you can’t. That’s what really hammered at me with the car problem.

As luck would have it, the shop just called and it’s just the ignition wires and it’ll be fixed this afternoon - for “just” $186 tops. Yipee.