Would you like to hear the story...

...of a very long week?

Read on.

Last Saturday morning I woke up in a state of mild despair. I had laundry to do, but no way to transport my clothes to a laundromat. I had grocery shopping to do, and while walking with a few boxes of cereal and a package of ramen had worked in the past, I didn't much feel like carrying a gallon of milk and a large amount of groceries on the bus. I had to go to the bank to pay some bills and resolve the issue of the one penny that I was off on last month's bills, but the bank was the opposite direction from the grocery store that I like to shop at. I moped and whined for most of the morning, but soon came to realize that life wasn't going to happen without some effort on my part. I realized when I finally resolved to just go grocery shopping (at the one by the bank) and deal with carrying the milk that these questions were going to come up again and again as I continued on my car-less journey. I spoke with a friend who gently suggested to me that perhaps I should consider actually buying a car. I abruptly told him it was an impossibility and that I couldn't even be tempted with the thought, but the thought still nagged at me even after the conversation was over. This is ridiculous I would tell myself, there is no way to even begin considering it. And I ran to catch the bus that takes me to the grocery store and bank.

Gallons of orange juice were on sale, and I do so love orange juice, so I bought one of those too. After all, as long as I had to lug along the gallon of milk...

One of the bank ladies was really nice and funny. One of them was totally snooty. I focused on the big glass of orange juice I was going to have as soon as I got home.

I caught the bus back, and as I was walking up the 2 blocks back to the alleyway that cuts into my neighborhood, I noticed an unusual thing. The traffic was swerving around what looked like a tiny child in the street. I didn't think it could actually be a tiny child, because who would just swerve around a kid in the street?

Turns out, it was a tiny child standing alone in the street and there are people on this planet that would just swerve around him and drive on. When I got up there, quite a few cars had simply driven past him, and he was standing all alone in the street screaming for his mommy in the most frightened and heart wrenching sob I have ever heard. I convinced him to join me on the side of the road and began asking him his name, or wher ehis home was, or where his mommy was. He couldn't have been two years old yet, and he wasn't wearing a diaper, just shorts, and he was soaked in urine, and he couldn't tell me his name or anything at all except "mommy", "daddy", "yes", and "no".

We knocked on a few doors around there, but nobody was home. On eof the neighbors finally drove up and said they didn't recognize him at all, so I call the police and we sat down in the dirt to wait for an officer to come and collect him. He recognized the cheerios in my grocery bag, so we enjoyed a snack while he babbled to me incoherently about the owies on his knees and the trees. When the officer finally collected him, hhe clung to me and I nearly cried at the thought of where he would go next.

I got home and decided I needed some practice time in order to recover from that emotional ordeal, so I packed up my organ books in my backpack and started to walk over to the church building. Just after I got there, Ann Marie texted and wondered if she might come by for a visit, and I decided I wanted to tdo that more, so I turned around to head back home. That's when the bishop's wife saw me.

She asked me why I was still walking and I told her about dead mathilda and taking the bus for the next long while, and she was horrified and appalled. Another member of the ward happened past at that moment, and Bishop's Wife asked Other Lady if she knew anyone that had a good car for cheap that I could buy. I tried to protest, but Other Lady responded quickly that she did know someone that worked with her husband in their mechanics shop who was trying to sell a nice little mazda for way cheap. She was so thrilled to have the opportunity to put her less active husband in a position to help someone in the ward that I could hardly say no to a test drive. We arranged for me to meet her husband at church the next day (which to her meant that he would actually come) and she arranged for a test drive on monday night.

By the time I got back to my house, Ann Marie was waiting for me and we had a lovely chat and some cafe rio in order to round out my improving attitude. Back to my house, I checked my mail and found statements from my 401k/ira companies about some policy blah blah blah and this that and the other. I browsed them and started to throw them away when a thought suddenly occured to me. I had exactly the amount of money in those funds that I would need in order to buy the car.

Of course, it would take weeks to actually procure the money, and who knows how much in taxes or if I would even be allowed to take it. Silly Nancy, quit daydreaming and shine up that bus pass.

Sunday came along and I met Other Lady's husband and he was so nice and a little stern in that grandfatherly sort of way. He told me that his friend would hold the car for me, but that I had better be honest and up front with them, because he already had other calls on it. I thought about that retirement money again and allowed myself to imagine the possibilities. Bishops wife noticed me talking to Car Man and asked me if I was going to buy it, I told her I still had some financial concerns but was seriously considering it. She dragged her husband over and informed him that he was going to have to help me make sure this happened. I reassured him that I was not going to come to the church looking for funding for a car, and that I was happy to keep my problems to myself. He simply smiled, said nothing, and went to start the meetings.

Monday morning, I have to admit, waiting at the bus stop, I thought more about the car thing and how I would kindly tell the nice car men that I simply couldn't afford to buy a car. I should call those retirement money places and get my excuses from them, I thought. So I did. And the nice lady at one place said to me "well since you are a full time student we can cut you the check today and it will be in the mail tomorrow. as a student you won't have to be paying any taxes on it since your income won't be high enough this year".

And I said "Do it".

Crazy.

I called the next place, and the nice lady there gave me a lecture about paperwork and faxing things and documentation of my student status and complicated, anxiety ridden instructions. She said she would send it all to me in an email.

See, I knew it was crazy.

I worked, and I found myself getting off of work early. I decided to finish off the Mathilda issue. She was still sitting in the lot at the shop and I had told the guys there that I was going to donate her, but in reality had not moved forward at all. I called a wrecker place about donation, and on a whim asked them how much they would pay for her. I called a whole bunch of wrecker places, and gradually upped the price. By the time I got off work and over to the shop that was Mathilda's resting place, I had gotten just enough money out of the deal to cut a few losses and turn a small profit. Small, but enough to make the other car a little more of a possibility.

I went home and waited for car guys to show up for the test drive. As soon as they pulled up, I liked the car. It was red and sort of peppy and cute. Older than Mathilda, but smaller and somehow a little cheerful. (My therapist friends think it is unhealthy for me to assign human names and emotions to cars, they think I get too attached. Whatever)

Before we even test drove the car I told car guys that it would take a few days for me to get together the money to do this. See how I was being up front with them?

They said if I wanted it I could put down a deposit and they would hold it til saturday.

I wanted it.

On Tuesday I read through the email about getting the rest of my money with the complicated paperwork. I looked in my bag and low and behold I had all the paperwork in a folder full of student-y type documents. No harm in faxing it, right? Sure it would take 7-10 business days for them to review my reqest and then 5 days to cut a check and then however long after that to mail it to me, but what the hay.

I called them an hour after I faxed the paperwork in order to double check that it had arrived safely. The lady couldn't find my paperwork, so she revied my file in the system. It turns out she couldn't find the papers because they had already been reviewed, approved, and a check was being cut for me at the colse of that day's market.

Seriously? When does "7-10 business days" become "an hour"? THAT NEVER HAPPENS.

I paid my deposit on the car.

I also went over to the church building that night in order to rehearse and record an audition cd for yet another big audition. Then I was more than a little bit exhausted, so I laid out a blanket on my back lawn and fell asleep until my phone alarm wake me up for the meteor shower.

I made a wish on a few falling stars before going to bed in my actual bed.

Weds I took a large group of children to the zoo. See the previous post. I also got off work early enough to go to the campus bookstore and look up text book prices.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I forgot what it was like to drop $150 on a book you don't really want to read.

I also finished turning in all the paperwork proving that I am in fact a Utah resident. They wanted me to pay out of state tuition. Crazy.

Thursday morning I finally completed the audition packet with the previously recorded cd. I mailed it. I worked, I missed my bus, I got home and went straight over to Greg's house to help him with his outfit for bingo night. (FYI- Greg's stage name is Tracy. You see what I am saying?)

Friday. Crunch time. I needed those checks to arrive and I needed to call people and to make decisions and ....

yikes.

My boss stopped by my classroom to talk to me about fall schedules. She has me working 30 hours a week, and she wants me there by 1130 in the mornings. That would be an impossibility without a car, but I told her I had one and was ready to go with that schedule. It means I get to keep health benefits, and if I can't do that I may as well quit anyways. Risky. I made a promise and I had no idea if I could keep it. But honestly, if things could fall together this way, well then that would be the best way.

I was tearing my hair out wondering if this would all come together, meanwhile I was pretending to everyone who didn't really care that I had it all together. Its not a great place to be emotionally.

Greg and Kyle and I went to bingo after I got off work. It was fun, it was silliness, I felt famous since greg looked so fabulous in his outfit, everyone wanted a picture with him.

Whe I got home, I frantically searched for the mail. my roommate had stuck today's mail UNDER the collection of this month's paid utility bills. Who does that? Don't you put the new mail on top? I'm not sure if she thought she was sending a message, and if she was, I'm even more unclear as to what the message would be. But Minnesota passive-aggressive habits do tend to make me suspicious. Maybe she really is someone that just puts the new mail on the bottom of the pile.

THERE THEY WERE!

Checks. My retirement become car fund.

When I woke up this morning it was cold and rainy. When is it ever cold and rainy in Utah in August? I've never seen it in all my 13 Utah Augusts. Oh well. I had to walk to the bank. It is a bit more than a mile, but I had a new umbrella (thanks Ally!) and money, and I knew that it would be my last ridiculously long walk in the rain. And after I got money things taken care of, I caught a bus down to the Car Guys shop and I bought a car.

Her name is Jenny. And yes, I am attached emotionally. Because I know what it means to walk in the rain and to take the bus and to carry gallons home from the grocery store and, well...

I'm going to the gorcery store tonight, and then I am going to do some laundry.

And I think that I might just sleep really well tonight.

After all, we all know who gets the credit for things coming together this nicely. I couldn't have done it better.