It may suck, but it could have been worse

I think it is strange how everything seems to fall into place sometimes...even at the bad times. Let's take this morning for example. Kaitlyn had a late school start because they were having a Halloween party so she didn't have to be at school until 10. A friend invited us over to her house for a play date before the party from 9-10. Well I was not really motivated to get moving this morning and all us moms know how that is, but I decided to suck it up and get a move on. So we left our house about 8:30 to head to the gas station and then on to our friends house. About 5 minutes into our trip all of a sudden my car makes a weird motion(don't know how to explain the feel) and will no longer really drive forward...great. Well by the grace of god, I managed to get it a few feet out of the road and happen to be by a place in the road that had a large shoulder(it is a fast two lane road). How I managed that, I have no clue because right after we got it there, nothing....it was still running, but wouldn't move. Kaitlyn kept telling me to go and asking why the car was stopped and that she wanted to get to her friends house....so here I am stuck on the side of the road..needing gas, and did I mention it was 40 degrees outside. So I call my husband, then I call the friend whose house I was going to and thankfully she was leaving to take her son to school so then she just drove to where I was to pick up Kaitlyn so she wouldn't miss her party and also because we were freezing since I couldn't let the car run with the heater when we were almost out of gas. In hindsight, I guess I could have just let it run and run out of gas, since it had to be towed anyhow. Then I called AAA and they said it would be 20-30 minutes. I then called me husband back and told him that he needed to leave work and come and get me so that we can follow the car to the shop and then be able to pick up Julie...wow. What a morning. I froze even though I was covered with a blanket and had my jacket on. Well my husband and the tow truck arrived about a minute apart and they hooked it off and on we went. Let's just say that we just paid this car off....yeah!! Well so far we had to fix a panel on the transmission 2 months ago which wasn't cheap, last month the battery died, and now this. My husband and I were both pretty sure it was the transmission so we were trying to decide if it was worth fixing since we were planning on buying a new car next year or if we should just bite the bullet now. So it turns out that it is the transmission which is going to cost between 2200 - 2800. We then decided that we really couldn't afford to take on a new car payment right now so we decided to have it fixed, which means it has to be towed again to a different shop that does transmissions.....I GUESS I KNOW WHAT MY CHRISTMAS PRESENT IS.

On the other end of this, if my friend had not invited us over this morning and had I not decided to get out and go, we would have been stuck on the side of the road and then been late for or missed the party altogether which would have been a major problem since this is all she talked about for the last week. It also just happened to work with her schedule that she was dropping her son off anyhow so she would be out and could pick up Kaitlyn. For some weird reason, I made it to the side of the road and out of danger and my husband didn't have a meeting that he was in, so he was able to easily leave work to come and help me out. So I guess if you are a glass half full kind of person, it turned out to all work out in the end....