Monday, January 10, 2011

These fish will be the death of me

We're having some really good times at our house these days.  And by good times I mean times that make me grind my teeth in aggravation and worry.  Oh, don't worry, we're all doing ok.  There's nothing catastrophic.  The universe is just handing us our ass via financial water torture.

Drip, drip, drip.  It's just one little thing after the other.

First, a part of our house blew away.  It wasn't a big part but it turns out that it was the most expensive part.  Thank goodness it's just decorative and not essential.  We figured we could put off the repair till after Christmas when we could better afford it.  Ignoring it has worked out pretty well so far. Well, except for a couple of days ago when I was talking to a neighbor and he mentioned our blown apart house and said "Well, it's not too much of an eyesore .... I guess."  That's Polite Neighbor Speak for "Fix your house you damn hillbillies!"

Next I had my fake heart attack.  We'll be paying for this for the rest of our lives.  (It turns out that when you go to the hospital because you suspect that something is wrong they charge you the same amount even it turns out that nothing is wrong with you.  That hardly seems fair.  There's something wrong with that system.  I'm guessing Republicans are to blame somehow.) The medical bills aren't really too much of a shock to us.  Frankly something is always breaking or exploding or needing to be removed from my body so medical bills are just a way of life for us.  That's what happens when you have CHOFS.

Next Jesse's car died. Sort of.  See, the car still worked but the car's computer system thought the car didn't work.  The car's starter worked just fine but the computer thought it didn't work so it wouldn't let the starter work.  I can't even wrap my head around how stupid it is that we had to pay over $700 to fix a car who's main problem is that it's a hypochondriac. 

Last week our dishwasher died.  This may not seem like a big deal but it is to us.  We are dishwasher people.  We don't do well when we have to hand wash dishes.  If we didn't get a new dishwasher we were in real danger of becoming feral.  After two days of not having a dishwasher the kids were drinking out of measuring cups.  We're getting a new dishwasher later this week but in the meantime Jesse and I are keeping a running tab of how many sinkfuls of dishes we've done and I think that one of us* is hoping for sexual favors in return for all our hard work.

And then as if all these financial woes weren't enough to break us, I had to go and buy medicine for the fish because they have intestinal parasites.  It pained me to do it because the fish medicine was more expensive than the alternative of scooping out all the old fish, flushing them and then buying new fish.  I am somewhat attached to the stupid parasitic fish though so I guess I couldn't really do that.

We'll be ok.  We have enough money for food and we've got our blown part house to shelter us and we're able to afford stupid medicine for our stupid fish.  I'm not complaining.  Joseph is though. Yesterday he was asking me please, please, please, please buy him this and when I explained that I just didn't have the money to buy him that right now but maybe he could wait till his birthday he whined "Why don't you just have more babies so that I can buy whatever I want to?"

*me

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

O my... a hypochondriac car! Why do they have to put computers in everything?? What happened to the simpler times? I really miss them. Sometimes I think it is the computers that will be the death of us...oh yeah, they already made some movies about that. .. Good luck with the fish. Poor Joseph, he is so deprived! Tell him to watch his Oswald DVD's. Love, Grandma Judy

Anonymous said...

Holy bajoly. You have had ENOUGH for the year already. Here's hoping you face only good things in the coming months!

(And also, I am so impressed that you write about all this with such good humor. Good for you!)

Stimey said...

Joseph has a point about the babies. I mean, c'mon already.

I know how you feel about your dishwasher. The device that fills that role in my family's house is the ice maker in the fridge. My marriage suffered a lot when we had to fill our own ice trays. It was a serious problem.

And good on you for being a good fish mom. I live in fear of the same thing happening to my mice, because $2.79 for a new one vs. $100 in vet bills and the satisfaction of being a responsible pet owner.

Also? You have been blogging for a loooong time, CHOFS lady.