Goin' Green

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So, we went to CarMax yesterday to try and buy a car. They have a calculator on line that you can see if you can afford one of their cars. We could. At least we thought we could. Once they started putting numbers in the computer, they said we'd have to double our down payment. Okay, we could do that. Oh, and add $6o do the monthly payment. Okay..... Then they said, "No." The bank offered us a list of cars they would finance at at that same rate. Okay. We looked at one, fell in love and went back in to proceed. Bank said, "No." No to the cars they suggested and were willing to finance. Now they want us to quadruple our original figure for the down payment and we're at $100 more than the original monthly payment. Sounds quick and dirty, right? No, this whole humiliating and mean trick took two hours. I think we were victims of a "Bait and Switch." I mean really, the bank gave us a list of vehicles they would finance and the backed out.


The good news is I got the leg completely finished on the Bones socks, and the stitches all lined up to do the heel flap. I'm really pleased with how the yarn is striping on this. Hope it picks up as nicely on the foot.

Back to the car thing. We came home and spent several hours discussing it and decided, for the time being, to use the bus. With the price of gas rising daily it'd pretty hard for us to afford the paid off car we had, let alone adding a car payment and much higher insurance to our lives.

Although it's not the most ideal situation, it'll work for us. For the nights Youngest Daughter has to be at work at 11:00 pm, she can take the bus to a well light convenience store and then a cab the rest of the way. It's less than a mile, so the cost is minimal and will keep her from walking in the dark. (It's a well lit, busy street, but that doesn't mean anything anymore.) And likewise she can call a cab to avoid the steep hills from the bus stop to her dad's house to take care of Eldest Son.

Eldest Granddaughter has three weeks of school left, so after that the only bus riding we will do is for pleasure. Our bus stops are less than a block away, one bus to get where we are going for all of us.

And it'll cut down on the impulsive trips to the store, push us to organizing our outings and use of groceries cuz we won't be as inclined to run to the store to get ___________________. With the money saved we'll be able to pay back our savings account and then feed it.

And none of it is written in stone. If it doesn't work for Youngest Daughter, we can start shopping for a vehicle again. It's just removed us from the Panic Mode. I could see YD getting to the point of agreeing to anything just to get a car. "Anything" would have financially crippled/killed us. This gives us time to sit back, weigh options and wait for something we can work with.

Tomorrow we clean out our dead cars and then get rid of them ASAP.

We had to cancel Youngest Granddaughter's initial appointment with the Speech Therapist yesterday due to the above mentioned car experience. So she's coming today instead. I was surprised she'd volunteered to do a Saturday appointment, but I guess if she has school kids as clients, Saturdays would be one of the days she'd have to work. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of help she can give us expanding YGD's very limited vocabulary.



Star Wars fans have some fun!

And it's still snowing in some places!

Ketchup

Today's the day I am supposed to get my tooth pulled. I have a funny feeling it's not gonna happen. When I made the appointment, the gal told me the only reason they wouldn't pull it is if they needed additional authorization from the insurance. I'm assuming they will, which means I'll go in, he'll look at it and say, "Yup, it needs to come out. We'll schedule it for next Wednesday." That's how my life goes. We'll see. If I'm really quiet for the next few days, you'll know I was wrong.

Got a couple of Charity Log Cabins in the mail yesterday. I am still working on the first one. I've decided, since we've lost so many members in our group, to do two six inch sections on each blanket to hurry things along. So I did the orange section on the right and am working on the green striped brown section on the top. I still have a couple of inches to do on that.


And before I checked the mail, I worked some more on my Bones socks. I have two more inches to add to the five already done before I start the heel. Haven't decided if I'm going to do a heel flap and gusset, or an afterthought heel. I just hate to break up the stripes on the patterning by changing the stitch count necessary for a heel flap type heel...

Well, Youngest Daughter's car still isn't working. The part we need is no longer manufactured. I did check out JunkYardDog.com and we've gotten two e-mails saying they have the used part. One place in Illinois, the other in Indiana. Phone calls will be made to see what we can find out. Otherwise it'll have to be junked. And then we are without a working car.

Been checking out bus schedules, and fortunately we can pretty easily take buses to work and to get Eldest Granddaughter to and from school. The worst part is that it extends Youngest Daughter's work day by a couple of hours. The bus gets to a bus stop about three blocks from her work either an hour before she needs to be there, or twelve minutes before she needs to be there. Getting YG to school is no biggie, but going home requires a walk of four blocks to safely cross the road with a light or take our chances and cross one block from the school. Things like grocery shopping is what is going to be no fun at all. Getting our five gallon water jugs filled once a week will require getting someone to take us to the Water Station. I'm sure we'll get it all figured out, and who knows maybe the car part is really available and it'll work.

Life is so much fun.