They're just things, right?

A few weeks ago one of our sons burst through the garage door coming home from school. We have a bad setup, I guess; our garage door into the house leads into the laundry room. We used to have a regular washer but about a year ago got uprights. I happened to be doing laundry at the time. I never, and I repeat NEVER leave the washer door open but because I was in the middle of doing laundry it was open. The garage door handle smashed into the washer door and broke the glass. It still runs but DANG IT...I wasn't the least bit happy. I'm still not. But it's just a thing, right??

This past week I had surgery on Thursday (gallbladder removal, no biggie, I'm doing great) so Ken was home from work on Friday helping me out. We texted Jeremy and told him to ride the bus home from school so he could pick up Ken's car and head back to swim practice. That way we wouldn't have to come pick him up when practice was over. A few minutes after he left the house he called and said he had a "fender bender". Not what a parent wants to hear. He rear-ended someone who stopped suddenly. The light ahead was green so he just didn't expect the lady in front of him to stop, but she did because the person in front of her stopped, not wanting to possibly get stuck over some railroad tracks because traffic in front of them wasn't moving well. It caught him off guard just enough to run into her back end. Her car apparently didn't get much damage and after all, isn't this why we have insurance? But the car Jeremy was driving is a 1984-not worth enough to have full coverage so we only have liability. Jeremy said Ken's front grill was dented so I'm thinking ok...not too terrible. Ken ran up to the scene and was gone for over an hour. A good friend of ours helped Ken tow the car to our house--not a good sign. I went outside and couldn't believe my eyes. The front end was OBLITERATED. The lady Jeremy ran into had a higher bumper than Ken's car-so her back end went about 6-8 inches into our front end. There happens to be a LOT of important stuff up there (who designed it that way??), most of which is now toast because there wasn't anything to stop her bumper. The damage to our car runs into the thousands, even just for parts, let alone labor. The hood is bent, the front of the frame is bent, it is awful. We desperately need that car and are now down to one car. Good thing I can't drive for a week because of the surgery. After that, it WILL matter much more. Nobody was hurt, thankfully...and after all, the car is just a thing, right?

So we're having a peaceful Sunday and I noticed that upstairs the water pressure was lower than normal. Later in the evening there was almost no water pressure at all. Strangely enough, the hot water had some pressure and in other places the cold water was normal...like no pressure at the sinks or shower, but the tub in our bathroom ran as strong as normal. Then I noticed something odd coming out of the tub faucet-it was orange, had no odor, and looked like gelatin or fish eggs. People out there with plumbing experience have probably seen this before and know exactly what it is, but we were stumped. It wasn't rust, we know that. We've seen rust and this wasn't it. So we did what any normal person would do--we turned to Google and according to a helpful website, we now have a broken water softener. Apparently there are orange, fish-egg looking beads at the bottom of water softeners and if they are coming out of your faucets you need to call for a repairman. Holy crap. But I'm trying hard not to stress because it's only a thing, right?

Last month both of our cars were in need of major repairs (that happens once every few years) and we spent over $3,500+ in repairs and parts...this month isn't looking good so far, either. I'm FREAKING STRESSED!!!!!