Finally

Juice got a new vehicle.



Surprise, surprise, we decided not to get another Toyota.

In other news, we've got about 8 weeks left before Juice squirts out baby #2. We have her actual name picked out, but I don't have enough creative juices flowing yet to think up a clever blog name for her.

It's an interesting study in parenthood, the difference between this baby and Peanut. By this point in Juice's first pregnancy, we had already bought all sorts of baby paraphernalia and I already had Peanut's room ready to go.

Currently, we haven't even gotten the old baby stuff out of the attic, and Peanut is currently residing in what will be her sister's room, because Peanut's new room still has a queen bed and various books, computers, guitars, and other crap in it.

Since I'm taking my vacation after the baby is born, I will have limited time to actually do anything with it. Luckily, I start working 10 hour days, 4 days a week after school is out, so I'll have Fridays off to do some of that work, but I can already tell that this is going to be very different.

Not that we're going to love her any less, but none of the things this baby will do will be firsts for us. We'll just have to be very conscious of making a big deal of her firsts for her so that she doesn't need therapy 20 years down the road.

And yet, the drama continues...

Looks like we're not out of the woods yet.

I met with a loan officer about purchasing land the other day and she pointed out some red flags on Juice's credit report. Despite having a very high credit score (closing in on 800), she has a high debt to income ratio because of her student loans.

Leave it to Sallie Mae to fuck up our day. Jucie has something like 7 loans through Sallie Mae, and all of them are in deferrment, since she just fnished grad school. Because they're in deferrment, they show no payment due, but the loan application program knows that payments will eventually come due and therefore estimates 5% of the total as a monthly payment. Which works out to about $1000/month in Juice's case. Which is not at all what her actual payment will be.

So we're waiting. Waiting on a letter from Sallie Mae, and in the meantime, Juice also got denied a loan for a new vehicle from our credit union, and I'm beginning to wonder why we're members. We've never been able to get a decent loan with them, and the fact that they flat out denied her when her credit is stellar just puts another nail in the coffin.

We ended up doing a joint application through the credit union, but who knows how that will turn out, since I've got some pretty heavy duty credit card debt. We should know something later this morning.

So if we get denied on that, Juice can't get a new car, even though it wasn't her fault that her 4Runner burned to the ground in the first place.

This has NOT been a good week.

Looking up

Juice talked to the insurance company today. She'll have a check by the end of the week. Which means another new car in our family.

This will be Juice's fourth new car in the 10 years that I've known her. Now, I'm sure she would have kept the 4Runner for a long time had it not decided it was a campfire, but now I don't know what she wants to get.

Also this weekend: Juice graduates from grad school. It's been a grueling two years, and I have taken on the burden of taking care of Peanut while Juice was in class. I am glad that will finally be over with, just in time for another baby to come into our lives.

And Juice's father got good news from the doctor. His foot is healing well and he is able to walk on it a little bit. Foot injuries are so difficult to begin with, and his health was so much in jeopardy back in December, we're glad he's doing better.

Now, if we can just make it through the end of the school year without anything else going crazy on us, we'll be just fine.

A little break from the drama, please.

So, last week it was swine flu, and I had a few unexpected days off, but then had to go back to work before I planned since everything got political and the CDC suddenly reversed its position on closing schools.

Early Friday morning, Juice's car caught on fire sitting in our driveway.


It was a miracle that our house was not damaged at all. The bushes in the front are a little crispy, and the car is a total loss, but our family is safe, and our home intact.

We've been waiting a day and a half for someone to come take the burned hunk of metal out of our driveway, though, and I don't have a very good feeling about the speed at which Juice's insurance is operating.

And if someone tries to tell us that they'll just repair the vehicle and return it to us, that someone is going to get a size 14 up their ass.

I'd just like a week of normalcy before our lives get turned upside down again when this baby is born. Is that too much to ask?