I had this all typed out and hit "publish" last Tuesday... Apparently it did not, in fact, publish. So it's a week later and things are fine. I'm fine. Cheerier post to come.
You recall I became surprise pregnant in July. Days later, I had a new job with a pay raise that would enable me to work from home three days a week, etc. And that shortly after that, Nate agreed to start looking for a new house... A house which we found very quickly. A beautiful, wonderful house that I wanted desperately enough to agree to a sort of weird financing situation.
We moved in October, with our old house on the market. And that's where the trials start.
The house is still on the market. We pay two mortgages each month, while keeping the heat as low as possible and our lights turned off. We have had to pour additional momey into this and that random thing at the old house, while getting used to increased expenses at the new house.
Just before thanksgiving, the upstairs heat went out. We were a little chilly at night, but we just threw some extra blankets on and waited for the heat to be fixed. It took three tries.
During the first round of polar vortex, the pipes in the sink froze. We couldn't find anything burst, so we just waited for the pipes to thaw. I washed dishes in the bathroom sink and used paper plates as much as possible.
A week or two after the pipes thawed, I realized the dishwasher wasn't actually washing anything... It just sort of ran constantly and never shifted cycles. I turned it off, washed the dishes by hand, and kept forgetting to call anyone to fix it. Well, I finally made that call only to find that the dishwasher had also frozen and had cracked. It's currently laying in severed pieces in the garage, while we wait for the floor to dry before installing a new dishwasher.
And just yesterday, a neighbor came frantically into the house to let us know the garage was on fire. She had 911 on the line and grabbed my barefoot kids to take to her house. Nate ran barefoot into the driveway to start throwing snow onto the fire, and was joined by several neighbors with extinguishers. I joined the kids, and watched as our street filled with fire trucks.
Thank god, it was a trash can fire, outside the garage. The corner of the garage needs some reframing and all new siding... But there was no structural damage. The fire was contained before it got to the roof. None of the electrical caught. No one was hurt (though Nate's feet were fairly cold).
We are so, so lucky.
But at the same time, I am so, so upset. I'm 35 weeks pregnant, tired, shaken, sore and crampy. I have been praying since August for our home and family. I hadn't really ever done that before. But here I am. Praying and hoping and begging. Bad news comes in threes? Please let the fire be our third. Please.
I have been tried. And I just don't know what else could go wrong. I am just waiting for the next bad thing.
