If not for bad luck......

If not for bad luck the past couple of weeks, I'd have no luck at all. Ok, so not to whine - but good gracious!!! My $500 camera lens' motor has died and Nikon's trying to figure it out. Then Zachary gets really, really sick. Last Wednesday night his asthma went into over-drive and we ended up with a 911 call and a boy who was blue. Not a good color on a person, to be sure. I didn't flip out, though I thought about it, and called Mike upstairs on his cell phone and he came downstairs lickety-split. We got Zachary's attack under control and he was able to sleep for a couple of hours. It's taken nearly a week for him to get well, but with lots of prayers from church, family and friends, he's on the road to recovery. My auto-sliding door on my minivan quit working a few months back and it takes Hercules to open/shut the darn thing. But because the last time it broke in 2003, it cost @ $400 to have it fixed, we have held off on it. The check-engine light is back on (it did shut off for a little while), the Traction Control System light comes on when I hit a bump, and my brakes started squealing like fingernails on a chalkboard. Have handled everything fine, except the brakes. That just makes me clench my teeth! ugh!! So I take the car in today to see what all is wrong and how many thousands of dollars it's going to take to fix my 104,654 mile 10 year old Honda Odyssey. Well, my car has its original set of brakes/pads/rotors/drums, etc.. It finally blew a drum, or something or other, hence the horrendous screeching, but get this - everything else on my brakes are still fine and don't need to be replaced - got another 15,000 miles on them! Only $115 to fix! Woo hoo - a big break here!!! The car door just had a problem with the computer synchronization - $41! I'm starting to jump for joy! Then the check-engine light/TCS lights - sigh....... My EGR valve for the cad. converter is clogged up from goo caused by the ethyl they use in the gas here. Great - there's no emission testing here so I say - who cares! Not so great he said - it can cause gas to back flow into blah, blah, blah causing your engine to fail. Oh shoot. $440 to fix/replace. grumble, grumble. And the spark plugs are getting close to needing to be replaced........for $250! I don't flippin think so!! Well, they are 100,000 mile spark plugs - you only change them every 100,000 miles - for $25/each and there are 6 of them. I SO don't think so! I'm not planning on driving this car another 100,000 miles. So that can wait until we start seeing performance issues. Yea!!! All in all today - the car is going to cost @ $870 to repair, but it's still cheaper than 4 years of car payments. We were really expecting a $2K car repair bill - so we'll take $870 and run! And the camera lens is covered under my home warranty policy. Bummer news - had to drive Mike's truck today and discovered it pulling horrendously to the right (had the wheel at a 45 degree turn just to go straight!). He said yeah, it's been doing that since he went in a ditch during an ice storm. Looked at his tires and they are nearly bald because he was too cheap to get the truck realigned. Big sigh...... Not happy that now he needs 2 new front tires - guess being cheap didn't work out too well there! But best of all, Zachary is on the mend and hopefully should be able to return to school tomorrow! Now that's the best news of all and makes me the happiest mommy in the whole wide world! God is great!!!