We went on a little road trip on Saturday. We headed up near Portland to get a new car. I’d like to say we had a fun time, but we didn’t so much. It was a long day…. a stressful and exhausting day, and we were glad when it was over. (And when it was finally over, we were able to laugh about it all, of course.)

We love our new (to us) car! In fact, Jeff and I have never loved a car so much before. We decided our car needed a name and both agreed she was a gal. We named her Belle, because the moment we sat inside her for the first time, it was clear as a bell that she was the right car for us. 

This picture was not actually from our “road trip”, but was taken this morning on our trek to the post office. (Bracken went sock-less and then throughout the ride ditched footwear altogether.)

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I guess I should  rewind a little to explain why it took so long for us to finally get new transportation. We’ve been in “limbo” mode for a long time, waiting for the insurance company to tell us how much money they would give us for our totaled truck. They said as soon as they told us, we’d have two days to get a new car because they would stop paying for a rental car. A guy came out and appraised the truck (but didn’t give us any information.) Any day we’d need to get a new car. We searched cars on craigslist every day. We waited. And waited. We wondered what in the world was taking so long?

Last week Jeff called the guy at the insurance company. His voicemail said he was out of town till the 7th. Jeff called the guy’s supervisor who was also out of town. The rental car company called us, saying they were unable to get ahold of the insurance company to okay an extension. They said we had better get ahold of them or else we’d have to start paying for the rental car ourselves. Jeff finally got ahold of someone at the insurance company. She said our truck had been declared totaled since December 18th (no one told us that), but that she wasn’t authorized to tell us how much they were going to give us. She said she’d have someone else call us back that day to let us know, but no one ever called. She also said she’d give us an extension till the next day on the rental car. What a hassle, eh? Jeff talked to our insurance company and told them the story. They called the other insurance company and got our rental car extended. We knew we couldn’t wait any longer for the other insurance company to get their act together, we needed to get a car! 

With all the money we could use for a down payment, and a loan, we now have wheels again. We returned the rental car and can now comfortably settle into our own car. The money part is a little stressful of course, but we’re so grateful to have transportation again. When we finally get money from the insurance company, we’ll hopefully get most of that loan paid off.

Why am I writing all of this? I guess because it helps me process it all. All of this business has been cutting into our work time and then one of Jeff’s tools broke. We were feeling frustrated because we had orders that need to go out. Luckily, Jeff is very handy with fixing things, he got it working for the time being. 

If we tackle one piece at a time we move right along and don’t become so overwhelmed by everything all at once. I remind myself of that when I start feeling stressed. We all need to give ourselves little pep talks from time to time, don’t we?