A Truly Horrific Weekend...

This past weekend shall live in infamy in the Lagana household as one of the most trying couple of days that I have had in a VERY long time. Let me break it down for you:

Friday evening: I came home from work kind of stressed, but generally happy. Finals week was coming up on Monday and I had been preparing for it nonstop for at least a month. It takes a lot of coordinating, organizing, mediating, and student and professor hand-holding to get us to a place where we can administer over 200 exams in just one week. I had an extremely busy day, the highlights of which involved excessive sweating and manual labor, and making my first ever crisis-intervention report on a troublesome student (!). I totally needed a break when I got home and instead of going to the gym Ant and I got sushi and watched TV. I went to bed early and proceeded to sleep for 12 hours straight. Seems like a pretty good start to the weekend right?

Saturday: wrong. Around 2PM I started to get one of my migraines. I usually only get them once every few months but lately they have been more frequent. I tried to suck it up, took a lot of medicine, and attempted to sleep my way through it. Four hours and at least one incident of uncontrollable vomiting later, I started to feel human again. Anthony was supposed to go to work, but his shift got cancelled so even though we really need the money he stayed home with me and fed me soup :)

Sunday: I got up early before church to prepare my lesson for primary. I was still feeling a little woozy, but I was fairly certain that I would only feel better as the day wore on. Church was great, my kids were great, and I was starting to feel hopeful that this weekend wouldn't be a total wash. After church Ant and I drove the 2 and 1/2 hours to my mom's house and right as we were pulling into the driveway I realized that I am starting to get another migraine!!!! I was beyond upset! Not only was the timing horrible, but I wasn't in my house with my own medicine, and I usually get at least a few weeks reprieve between these horrible episodes. Three hours, a series of mystery pills from my mom's medicine cabinet, and yet another bout of uncontrollable vomiting later I start to feel doped up, but human again. To catch up for lost time, we stayed late at my mom's house. But hey, I figured I could catch some sleep on the ride home. After all, I've got to be at work extra early tomorrow morning for my first official day as a full-time salaried employee and for the first day of finals (again, which I have been preparing for for a month).

We start for home around 9PM. Feeling good, talking and joking, at around 11:30PM Anthony makes a startled noise and starts pulling us over to the shoulder of I-75. That's right ladies and gents, my car died. With my dogs in the backseat, me still hung over with sickness and medication in the passenger seat, Anthony got the number of a 24 hour tow company and called them to come and get us. (I know what you are thinking, and No, we do not have AAA. Why? Because we are idiots.) We got the car and ourselves towed to an auto shop (closed for the night) but based on our description to the tow-guy, things didn't look good. He solemnly made the symbol of the cross over our car and told us that if his 16 years of experience are worth anything, he is pretty sure that my car has now passed into the great beyond.

LEST we all forget: Anthony and I are relying solely on my car for transportation because HIS GOT STOLEN three weeks ago. To quote my mom, "If we didn't have bad luck, we would have no luck at all!"

My mom and my brother came to our rescue and picked us up from the exit around 1AM, took us home, and my mom generously let us borrow her minivan for the next few weeks until we can sort out our transportation nightmare. This morning the autoshop confirmed the tow-guy's suspicion that my car is beyond saving, so we are now in the process of signing a car over to a junkyard. Again.

So the car search continues...only now we are shopping for TWO cars.

Here are the positives I have gleaned from the past days:

• I did not die or stroke out (although I could have sworn I was going to do both at multiple times)
• Anthony is alive (although still a little sad that he hasn't been able to spend any of his semester break fishing yet. Actually make that a lot sad)
• We didn't crash when our car went bad on the interstate. This really is a blessing, I know not everyone is so lucky.
• We hadn't purchased Anthony's car yet when mine died, so we were able to scale back our budget for Anthony's to accommodate it. (Instead of spending all of the replace-a-car funds and then have to replace another car)
• My mommy is awesome and has the heart and means for saving the day
• I have a full time job (officially as of today!)
• In spite of everything, Anthony did well this semester and things are on track for his graduation
• I have wonderful friends who help me laugh instead of cry and give me advice on how to play hard-ball with car dealers. (Not like I could ever do it, but I could always imagine that I could be tough one day :)

See, the list goes on and on! I refuse to let this get me down, we will get through this and since I know I will laugh about this one day I've decided why wait? Let's laugh about it now! :)