Stranded For A Night

We drove up to North Texas on Thursday and spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday visiting with family in Dallas and Denton and collecting the Lone Star Girl from her visit with her Denton grandmother. The plan was to drive back on Monday, so that the girls would be home for their busy schedule on Tuesday (swimming lesson and ballet for the Lone Star Baby and orthodontist appointment and swim practice for the Lone Star Girl).

Unfortunately, we got a late start and, after stopping for dinner in Austin and hitting the road again, the car started smoking. The radiator was busted and it was after 5pm. We had to find a motel and spend the night and find a mechanic who could fix it in the morning and we ended up leaving Austin at around noon today when all was said and done. We missed the swim lesson and re-scheduled the orthodontist appointment but did manage to get the Lone Star Baby to ballet under 15 minutes late (after swinging by the house to grab ballet clothes and then heading straight to the ballet school immediately upon reaching town) and the Lone Star Girl to swim practice at night. Whew!

The repair (plus motel plus food) will really set us back and I don't know that we'll be able to fix the bathroom crisis that we had been hoping our tax incentive check might possibly cover this summer - it's quite a detour the last couple of days have been. Still, I can't help thinking how we were able pay for cheap shelter and the repair and to get home safely, even though it's really going to hurt financially. That's a whole lot more than an awfully lot of people in our country would have the means to do and, even though I'm a little stressed, I feel deeply grateful and blessed that we have the resources that we do have. I don't kid myself that it's because of any particular virtue - I know that the chaos can come, no matter what you try to do. We are just incredibly fortunate.