In Between the Pretty Pictures

I don’t like to use this blog as a place to complain or bring negativity, but I think on social media in general we are always showing our lives in the most positive light. And that’s just not reality. Chris and I have so much to be thankful for and appreciative of in our lives and we’ve really had a lot of good fortune come our way the last several months. But it’s not all roses all the time. What I haven’t been posting about is the fact that one of our cars, a Ford Escape, has been sitting in the garage with the engine in pieces for several weeks now. It started making an odd noise while I was driving it and quickly got worse so Chris, his brother and his dad looked into it. In the end the best choice was to replace the engine. Chris wasn’t too keen on just getting an overpriced one to get it up and running so he’s been on the hunt while his brother has let him drive his spare truck. This is so petty but I’ll be honest here, I was looking forward to parking in our new garage this winter. My Honda Civic has a remote starter so I can warm it up with an app on my phone, but when it snows or rains or is just friggin cold, it’s a million times nicer to just walk out into the garage and get right in the car. Since we still have a lot of garbage from all the home projects we have going on and boxes in the garage, there is only room for the down and out Escape right now. Boo hoo, I know. It’s just that after so many years of not even having the option of parking in a garage, I’m super bummed about having one and still not being able to park in it. Now for the ironic twist. Chris goes to school from early afternoon until late evening. He was out looking at a good potential engine to get the Escape back in working order and….the truck broke down on his way home. It is starting to feel like we did something wrong and karma is out to get revenge in the form of insane car issues. Dramatic, much?

 I also haven’t yet posted about the fact that we are now a 4 dog household. I’ll go more into that later but for now it’s been hectic simply because 3 out of 4 have been sick in the last week. Chaos goes to school with Chris daily and the facility is not just for private training lessons and group classes but also for boarding and daycare. You can imagine the number of dogs that are in and out every day. Chaos came home with some kind of bug last week that resulted in explosive diarrhea all over his crate. It was over it in a day or so but by Tuesday morning at 3AM we found out he had passed it onto Tigger, our 9 year old boxer mix. As of today the count is up one more dog since I came down from taking a shower last night to find Ares had the same problem all over the living room carpet (and STEPPED in it). At this point we are just waiting for the 4^th dog to get it and will be pleasantly surprised if she doesn’t.

I am positive that any number of you reading this are dealing with problems a million times bigger and I do not in any way mean to act like car trouble or sick dogs spell the end of the world. I’m just beyond frustrated that the car thing is a problem that almost never seems to go away for us. It’s seriously a running joke in my family that we have horrible luck with cars. Sometimes we laugh about it, sometimes we cry about it and sometimes we just want to throw our hands up and say WTH. Or maybe take a baseball bat to the offending car of the moment and call it a day. Dogs get sick, just like kids, but this kind of virus running through the house for a week has nearly had my pregnant self in tears. Can’t a girl just burn her candle collection for kicks instead of in attempt to cover the smell of poop?!

BUT we will get our car troubles straightened out and the doggie virus will run its course and life will go on, I’m sure of it. So I’m not writing this post to conjure up pity at all. I just wanted to throw it out there that real life happens in between the pretty pictures. In general I will keep this a happy, positive space and have no plans to detail any more of the not so great things that happen around here regularly. Trust me, car issues and dog diarrhea are just a slice of the pie. But sometimes as I read blogs or scroll through my IG feed I start thinking I’m the only one having a bad day or a bad week or something going on that isn’t exactly picture worthy. So I wanted to make sure I stay relatable and real and that’s the reason for this post.

I hope y’all are having a pretty picture kind of day!