“Tragedy is when I cut my finger.  Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”  Mel Brooks

“I don’t think you can take anymore bad news.” the boy informed me when he got home on Thursday night.

“You’re probably right, but you can’t say something like that and not tell me what happened.”

Turned out that he’d blown a tire that afternoon.  As I sat there, taking in the latest bit of bad news in our life, there was this little voice in the back of my head that muttered something about, “One day you’ll look back on this and laugh.”  However, laughter wasn’t exactly forthcoming in that moment.  Instead, I sat there doing math and trying not to cry.

We’d barely been scraping by this month, but I knew that with the paychecks being deposited on Friday, we’d finally be able to pay the mortgage, and have just a little left over to finally be ahead instead of facing the red.  Now, that little was going to cover replacing tires.

Now, before I continue, I feel I should make an interjection here.  I realize that over that over the last several months, the few times I have blogged, it’s been stressed, depressed writing.  I’ve just been stuck.  Completely overwhelmed and terrified of what bad news each day is going to bring.  The thing is, I know that the more I focus on feeling crapped on, the more crapped on I’m going to feel.  So, I’m making a point to try to not focus on the bad, and I’m going to try to find the good and the funny/absurd.

And back to the story…

Thankfully, we did have just enough to cover the mortgage and the tires.  However, I am trying very hard not to freak out right now, because I have zero idea of how we’re going to pay our electric bill that’s also due this week.  I dream of a day when we can pay all of our bills on time every month.  I know that we’re nearing that day, because we’ve already made great progress since the end of last year when we couldn’t pay anything.  So, that’s a happy thought.

And despite the stress, and the fear, we’re okay.  The boy and I are together, holding on tight to each other and to Jesus.

And if we do end up living down by the river, at least we’ve got a van.