Toga! Toga! Toga!

When I was in college, I was so broke that I took my measly paycheck to the local Meijers to cash it and have money orders made for my share of the rent and utilities. For my most broke six months, I was left with about ten dollars for food and bus fare for the following two weeks.

I bought a lot of eggs and cheap bean burritos.

I'd always thought those days were far behind me. The reality is, though, that these recent months have been so financially difficult that we're dangerously close to reliving my college experience. Frankly we are barely making it paycheck-to-paycheck. We're fortunate that we have money trickling in from here and there (and some super great friends (especially this one; she just started blogging today) who've helped out in a pinch or two), otherwise I don't know what I'd do.

Sometimes the idea of reliving college years is appealing. NOT the scrimping and saving part, though.

Anyway, today as I was backing out of our driveway, I realized I'd forgotten something inside the house. As always, I was running late, so I hurriedly threw the car into park, opened the door, and stepped out.

Except that instead of putting the car in park, I had put it in reverse. I realized this as my foot shot out from under me and I started to fall and stumble backwards. I was hopping on my left foot, trying to get back into the car and find the brake with my right foot. As I struggled, I had visions of the open door knocking me over and the car continuing on without me. With my four year-old daughter strapped into her car seat.

But instead of hitting me, the open car door caught on a decorative column on the side of our house. There was an odd, groaning sound as the door bent; at that moment I made it into the car and slammed on the brakes.

I had to pull forward so that I could close the car door. It was stuck waaaaaaaaaaay open. I briefly considered ditching it and biking to her preschool, but we were already late and I was working. Plus I didn't want to deal with the hassle of getting out of the car, extricating my bike from the garage, emptying the variety of things I'd packed into the car for the school day and shoving it into the bike trailer, so I said, "EFFF it!" and yanked as hard as I could.

The door budged by about six inches.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEF IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!" I yelled and pulled with all my might. It closed!

Well, almost. The 'door is ajar' light is still on. Whatever. The door isn't going anywhere right now.

So, now we'll have to scrape up the money for the deductible. Fun, fun times.

And not a keg party in sight.