Sacrifice. Pain. Suffering. All parts of the human condition. We are meant to feel discomfort. Kyle is about 2-3 weeks out since being in the hospital on and off eight days for two back to back bowel obstructions that were able to resolve (both) without a surgery that would certainly cause more damage to him and his well being long term. Don’t get me wrong; surgery is important, but as a last resort like when he went septic and had emergency surgery in April… that was required of him which is why he submitted to His will for us so quickly. Also: that was life and death, no in-between,

He’s doing quite well. Majority of his belly pain is gone because of his extra exclusive new eating habits and his new meds keep him using the bathroom as he should. But when he was just recovering and not working, the new meds made his ADHD that was previously untreated look almost nonexistent but he’s manic, bouncing off the walls with nothing to do. Lucky for me, Kyle went back to work this Sunday, the 9th and because he works weekends and now it’s Thursday early morning, today is like most folks’ Sundays.

It’s been a chaotic few weeks to say the least. When we were at our breaking point, the good Lord provided as per usual. (Not that we doubted His goodness, but ya know, things were scary for a long time…). On the 11th and 12th this month, we had our dumb three car payments try to come out along with our insurance for all three said dumb cars. Kyle hadn’t received a paycheck in over a week because the book keepers at his work put in his sick pay wrong so we were thinking either miss a whole month’s worth of installment loan payments or even bankruptcy just to get our eyes above water again.

Now mind you, we are both hardcore Dave Ramsey followers and despite budgeting weekly and even daily to get ahead of the storm, our stupid outweighed our few and far between good financial habits. Borrowing money is stupid. I despise it with my being but it is almost unavoidable when you have less than ideal credit and can’t start anew.

But we did a good (yet stupid) thing on Friday. We sold two of our three “better” vehicles that were both our daily drivers; Kyle’s Dodge Ram 1500 and my Ford Edge. We wanted two vehicles for two of us that were in decent condition. We were planning to keep our Wrangler at home as Kyle’s “new” daily driver since he drives less than I do, since that car had the most negative value and equity. Like I said before, our credit is less than ideal but I’ve been so stupid with buying cars in my past that they wanted to “help us out” (I say that with a loaded gun in my mouth…) which meant using our local credit union to broker a deal so we could be put into a new vehicle.

Now, usually the new cars come out in September or October of the previous year. But we managed to swing a 2025 Toyota Tacoma (since we were getting rid of the Ram with a tick in the engine.) with heated fabric seats, flat charcoal gray with running boards for my short legs to get in, I was a little disappointed because I wanted to new 4runner over a truck but after driving this bad girl for almost a week, dare I say I like her better? She is a she for sure… sexy, cool, sleek, pretty, makes me daydream just looking at that new paint job.

Now the question is: how bad did the dealership rip us off? I mean, this is inevitable but they discounted the price of what my Ford Edge loan was currently at so that we could buy a brand new compact v6 truck for the price of a fully loaded sedan would be, but for a truck. So I have four wheel drive in the winter which is great here in Washington. I mean, we carried over significant negative equity from the truck because it did have some decent mechanical issues. But despite all THAT… we still save money for only insuring two vehicles rather than three and so despite having a newer and larger car payment, we save at least $300 a month from what we were paying for everything before.

Granted, when I eventually go back to work, it will allow us more ability to save money and start chugging away at the debt. I did have a job interview at the local hospital to be a transporter / wheel chair pusher by taking patients to and from ct, x-ray, MRI, anywhere within the hospital or out to their vehicle at discharge. It went well and I should find out by the end of the week if I get that.

Also found out I am going to have to do jury duty the week of Christmas. I already said I could because I don’t need any other legal trouble if I don’t do that or submit my availability. But I shouldn’t have to do a full week because as much as we need court everyday of the year in this county, court judges don’t want to work Christmas week. I remember my first jury summons was summer of 2020 and they had cancelled courts indefinitely unless it was over zoom so I got out of that one. So this will be a first.

Apparently since my apartment is remodeled, I’m throwing Thanksgiving this year. I have no idea what I’ll even do if I get this new job and have to work. But I know that I am NOT making a turkey. It seems too hard and I don’t need anymore stress in my life. It will be interesting because it will be almost everyone from my wedding who comes to my house so: Me, Kyle, his grandparents who live upstairs from us, his uncle and cousin who live nearby, my parents, and maybe? my sister and her little family. Idk she hasn’t confirmed yet. But I thought the olive tree branch should be extended doing my due diligence.

So we got an interesting end of the year planned.

Stay tuned.

Dani