Thanks everyone for the feedback on the last post. I think we will just do the winery picnic with both families and focus on quality time together.
This week has been a nightmare. On Sunday, our AC stopped working. We have home warranty, but they called on Monday and said it'd be at least another week. DH's dad came to the rescue yet again and got the guy who services his AC to come out that afternoon. It was a broken capacitor. He charged us the $100 that we would have paid as the service fee, so we just cancelled the home warranty claim. On Tuesday, I got rear-ended heading in to work. It seemed to be very minor cosmetic damage, so all I took was his company (it was a work truck) information and his name and phone number. I told him I likely wouldn't follow up on it unless my car started acting weird.
On Wednesday, I had a 2 hour commute in to work. It normally takes 45 minutes. The evening before I'd noticed my car driving a little strangely, and I still noticed it yesterday morning.
Last night, I called the guy. No answer, so I left a voicemail. This morning, I texted him and hinted that I would be following up with his company if he did not respond. He texted back a few minutes later with a really rude response asking how I was going to tell him now that there's an issue when I had said nothing was wrong. I responded that I had said that it didn't seem like anything was wrong and that I'd only follow up if I needed to. I then asked for his company's insurance info. Again, no response. If I haven't heard from him by this afternoon, I will be calling up the company. I suspect he didn't report it to his company and that is why he was so angry.
Additionally, our hall bathroom toilet had randomly started leaking a few weeks ago. DH's dad took a look at it and gave us the options of a super cheap fix or a new toilet. He said the one we had was actually really old and inefficient and since we could get a decent new toilet for under $200, we should just do that. He installed it for us yesterday. Once again, I'm incredibly grateful for his dad's handyman skills. DH realized afterwards that we should have just given him the sausages as a thank you. He really liked them and gave us $25 for a 10 lb. box containing about 160 links.
Here's hoping there's no more expenses for awhile. Every time I feel like we're starting to make progress, things set us back.
Revised Mother's Day Plans and Hell Week
May 4th, 2017 at 01:59 pm
May 4th, 2017 at 07:20 pm 1493922030
So sorry about the other driver who hit you. It reminds me of a time years ago when someone hit me in a parking lot. She was very apologetic about it at the time but later when the insurance companies got involved, she was very rude and accused me of driving "like a bat out of hell" in the parking lot. (I was not.)
May 4th, 2017 at 08:52 pm 1493927553
I hope DH was involved in the steps of removing and replacing the toilet and all the other repairs your home has needed. Going forward a house generally requires a series of seasonal demands, upkeep, updates and upgrades. A lot of these jobs are DIY with a bit of research on You Tube to walk you through each step.
It's prudent to build up 1% a year of value fund to have money at hand for the next unanticipated project. It's the same principal as the EF for job loss and another for vehicle maintenance/replacement.
May 5th, 2017 at 01:43 pm 1493988190
Snafu, unfortunately we were both at work when FIL replaced the toilet. However, we have discussed DH going back to work with his dad on the weekends if no overtime is available, so that will give him some exposure. We do now know that the AC capacitor tends to break every 2-3 years (ours broke at exactly 2.5) and after looking it up, it seems to be a pretty straightforward fix (the key is remembering to discharge the old capacitor). That will save us about $80 moving forward since we will still would need to buy a new one to do the repair.