My wife and I often joke that things happen to us in threes. It isn’t a funny joke, but more of a black humor born of too many years where for every trauma, there are generally two more following right behind it. True, this is the human mind assigning patterns where there are none, as in the case I’m about to relate – but it doesn’t make the pain of the events any less real.
I’ve already related about the dishwasher event last month, and how we finally got our floors back a week and a half ago. While the originating event was six or more weeks ago now, its conclusion was just last week, so it’s fresh in our minds. So fresh, in fact, that when this week started to turn sour, we immediately looked for the rest of the triumvirate of Fates.
In fiction, we are often reminded of the power of threes. Not just in the three act structure, but in the content of the story – three wishes, three bears, etc. We like threes, and as storytellers we add them reflexively just as much as seeking them out when fitting something to the pattern. This is why when we look at what happened in the last few days, we automatically fit the events into the pattern of the three.
Our tale is short but bittersweet. Thursday night, after a somewhat warm day, we noticed that the house wasn’t as cool as it should be. In fact, it was in the upper 80’s, despite the thermostat being set lower. Yep – the AC was dead. Luckily, in the end, not as dead as dead could be, but close enough.
The next day, while waiting for the AC repair guy to come out (luckily it was just a few parts, not the whole unit), my wife’s van wouldn’t start. We’d had plans to replace both my car and the van, but those plans had involved words like “eventually” and “when we can afford to,” not “NOW, because we need at least one reliable vehicle to survive.” While we eventually got the van to start, it was clear to us we had a choice – use the money we’d saved for a downpayment to get the van fixed, letting us remain a 2 car family, but with limited life expectancy in our vehicles (my car was on the verge of hitting 200k), or trade both in and get that new car now.
You can guess where this is going.
Yesterday afternoon, we became a one car family again, and the proud owners of a 2015 Subaru Forester. It’s the base, bare bones model – it also has more bells and whistles than any other car we’ve owned before this (helps when you only buy cars once every 8 or 10 years :)). I won’t deny it will be a challenge having only one vehicle, but with my working from home this year, we think it will be doable. Have mercy.
And now, the obligatory photos!
Saying goodbye to our old cars
Hello new car!
In its full glory