It’s Christmas so why shouldn’t everything break?

It’s the holiday season, for me that means Christmas. I’m not religious and while the holiday has religious undertones, let’s face it, a lot of people celebrate it who aren’t religious. Regardless of what you celebrate, there is probably some expense attached to it. For some it may be more than others, if you’re like me and are a poor college student your budget is pretty tiny to begin with, but you save over the year and manage to eek out a little something to make the season magic. Of course, that means you have no savings, but what could go wrong?

The answer to that is apparently, everything. Why is it that everything decides to break when your budget is screaming in pain? Maybe I only notice it when I have no money for anything, but it seems that when money is tight everything around me starts falling apart. While some of those things are more essential than others, this time around the things that broke have a high price tag attached and not a lot of wiggle room for when they can be fixed.

First my AC decided to break… again. It’s been a disaster ever since I bought it. Every few power outages the system will run continuously with no way of shutting it off. Oh is it below freezing outside? How about some nice cool AC to bring a taste of the outdoors inside? Yeah, it wasn’t a big deal when the power outages tripped the problem over the summer, but now it’s happening in winter. So that needs to be fixed before I freeze to death or something breaks worse. This will be the fifth time they are here to fix the problem and every time I get a nice surprise bill. Oh labor is covered because the system is under warranty, parts are another story. Last week I got hit with a ~$500 bill and now this week (yes it happened twice in a week), I’m going to get hit with another. This time one of the supervisors of the big faceless company that installed the system came out to inspect so I’m hopeful that they are tired of getting calls over and over.. and over… and over.

Okay, that isn’t the end of the world. The budget can handle it, barely. Hopefully nothing else goes wrong, he said to the void who couldn’t care less. One of the doors to the outside started leaking. That has been an ongoing problem apparently, I just never noticed it until I found wet carpet. So that needs to be fixed too, thankfully I have replacement stuff coming. The problem is the large, very large, bill attached to that stuff to fix the problem. Oh and I ripped out the carpet in my closet and around the door so now I need to fix that too along with the water damage to the walls surrounding the area. From the looks of it this has been going on for years before I bought the house, so that’s a lovely surprise.

Well at least nothing else can go wrong… right? Last night my car died. Yeah, seriously just when I thought things couldn’t get worse my car wouldn’t start. I managed to get it going and back to the house, but just barely and after trying to push it (since I was close to home), which also did something to my knee which is a whole other story. Thankfully medical is covered through the VA or I would be super screwed. I think I’ve diagnosed the car problem… maybe, but I can’t fix it so it, it’s out of my skill set and I don’t have the proper tools for the fix (meaning it’s going to be expensive!). I’ve swapped fuel pumps, popped a whole new engine into a different car I’ve owned, I like to think I’m pretty handy, but somethings even I can’t fix.

Last year it was appliances in the house breaking, even the garbage disposal. I wish I could say these are low cost problems, but I cannot. While the AC may not be a super NEED TO DO NOW thing, the car and leaking door are definitely need to solve ASAP problems. The door won’t be fixed for a few weeks (lead time to get the stuff to fix it) and the car can’t get fixed until after the holidays (mechanic is closed). So while they shouldn’t have an impact right now, they are still sitting there in the background waiting for me to fix the problem.

I have places to get to and things to do though, so hopefully I diagnosed the car issue correctly. If I did then the problem only happens under certain conditions and I just need to avoid doing those things. That shouldn’t be too hard to avoid, but I would rather have someone take a look at it and fix the problem. Anyway that’s my holiday season, how are you? Haha.