Come ON, already!

Countdown to cruise: 8 days.

Longest 8 days of my life, I should say. Over the past few days, we've had nothing but fairly large, important annoyances pop up. My car began acting up the day I was on a field trip with Z's class, driving children that don't belong to me around town. Aaron thought he found the cause of the problem and fixed it, but we rejoiced too soon. It began showing the same weird symptoms last night, and we have no idea what to do next. Yes, we're avoiding going to a repair shop just yet, because well, it's a repair shop. Those generally equal tons of money - money I don't have because every penny we've had that hasn't gone to bills has gone into our vacation/spending money fund. I just don't know if my car will make it through this last week before we leave. Crap.

Also, Aaron found out something this week that makes his job a whole lot harder. I can't exactly say what, because my blog isn't private, but suffice to say it was not good news & he definitely didn't need one more thing at work to stress about. Double crap.

I'm getting to the point where it's hard to keep a positive outlook on things. I have so much work I need to do next week before we leave, it's unreal. I will be at work at 5:30am and stay until nearly 4:00pm each & every day, just to make sure I don't come back to a heaping, steamy pile of crap after our trip. With each passing day, the excitement for the impending trip is being overshadowed by looming things like malfunctioning cars, worrying about work, and worrying about money. I promise to shut up after I vent this one time, because I am fully aware that I might sound like a brat, whining about what might or might not happen after we get back from our amazing vacation. A vacation that a lot of people would never get to take, because they are jobless & struggling to make ends meet. And yes, I know -- people are starving in the world, children are fighting terminal illnesses, and I'm bitching about my car sputtering. I have officially chided myself & made myself feel sufficiently guilty, so no one else needs to do it. I know things could always be worse, but that doesn't negate the fact that this past week has done nothing but piss me off.

I just hope the stress of all we will have to come back home to doesn't affect our trip. We worked so hard over the past 15 months to save up for this magnificent vacation, and I want nothing more than to just go and relax. Have all the fun I've been imagining in my mind, enjoy our family, and bask in the glory of all that Alaska has to offer. I can do that, right? I can forget my car might be on it's last leg, and I can forget that my husband has a knot in his stomach on a daily basis now, right? I can forget that we will come home & quite possibly spend a lot of money on whatever needs to be done, right? Yes, I can. I have to. I will.

There. Now, I feel better. Deep breath ... forge ahead!