This week I had sometime before the AEL meeting, and so I
drove around a bit until I found a car wash.
It was 8$.
So why would an eight dollar car wash be so significant? It was significant because for the first time
in four years I had the money, the time, the effort, and energy to spend on it.
It was weird.
I sat in the car wash with the radio playing and it occurred
to me. This wasn’t our last eight dollars for the week. We didn’t have to hold
onto those eight dollars like gold-- to use on gas or hay. Then having to stretch out those last eight dollars worth of gas
to work
for the whole week, or one bale
of hay to last for four
days- which would mean one feeding a day (not two ) and of
much less then the horses would need. Meanwhile
sweating it out in the hopes that nothing else happened, like a blown tire, or one
of the horses getting sick, or one if us getting sick and needing cough
medicine that would mean no gas or no hay, and us wishing for our eight dollars
back.
I wasn’t so mentally and
emotionally exhausted from stress-
what that meant was that I actually had the presence of mind to think to
myself- hey the van is nasty- I should surprise my slave and do something. I went to three places to find the kind of working
car wash that I wanted. I wasn’t driving
fast, or worried that I should be conserving gas money or time. I wasn’t so
exhausted at that the thought of having to do one more thing - that I felt
pushed to my edge.
It was the mundane. The ordinary. It was what normal people do
in normal lives when their cars are dirty. It felt good. Foreign.
And afterwards I went to AEL with my new looking van- which
is blue by the way- and before I went
into the restaurant I looked the van
over, all sparkly and clean. And I was relaxed, even giddy. This is what a normal life feels like.
The funny part was that after AEL when I was leaving, I
walked over to one of the dirty vans in the parking lot- because I thought it
was mine!
It was then that I realized that after all of this time and effort- that
things really are getting better, slowly, as we financially, emotionally and
physically recover from the last few years of our life. All of our work to
change our situation was paying off, and I was rewarded with an 8$ car wash.
How lucky am I?
