Nickels and Dimes...

Hi Abba. Here we are back at the first half of the month when all the bills are due again. There's not a lot of room to move in the first half of the month money wise. We have to stick to the budget pretty closely and then there's only a little wiggle room. It just seems like we've had one thing after another go wrong in the past few days. I had car trouble and the battery needed to be replaced. Then, I was way overdue for my oil change so that needed to be done. Deidra had a bladder infection so I had to take her to the doctor and then to get a perscription. Andy's oil change was way overdue so I had to take his car in today. His serpentine belt needs to be replaced so now we're having to deal with that too. So frustrating. Andy told me the appt was at 10 am, I get there and they're saying I'm a half an hour late and was supposed to be there at 9:30 so they put someone else in front of me. Mom (the part's manager) is trying to get the cost of the belt for me and I don't know anything about Andy's car and she gets all flustered at me. Then, she finds out that they need to know something else that I had no clue on and she gets mad at me again. At this point, all I want to do is sit and cry. She's all flustered at work because they're busy and she's short a person. I blew up and asked her what I had written on my forehead that made everyone take out their frustrations out on me. I'm tired of it. I called Andy back and he told me just to get the car and he'd deal with it over the weekend. Mom says "well, I don't get how people can drive around cars and not know what they're driving." I told her that Andy knew all the info...it's his car...it's not mine. I can tell you about mine. Anyway, they were doing the oil change and she had sent someone to pick up the right oil filter so I couldn't just take the car. So, we sat and sat and sat. 2 hours later she tells me the price of the belt and if we want it done. They had to wait for the car to cool down before they could do it. I tried to get Andy on the phone and couldn't, so just as I told her to just do the oil change and we'd worry about the belt later, she starts to lecture me. I told her that I wasn't going to have Andy get miffed at me if I didn't have his approval and just did it as the budget is pretty tight at the beginning of the month and we were looking at paying all the bills for the next 2 weeks out of these paychecks that we're getting now. Andy called and told me to go ahead with it. I had to go out and give service the go ahead and they got us a ride home. I went to leave without saying good-bye to Mom and she called after me down the hall. She asked me to go to Bible study with her tonight and I said right now I didn't know what I wanted to do and that I'm sick of being everybody's scape goat. I started crying and she told me that she was sorry and that bible study was just what we needed. She didn't mean to be so hard on me. She said that it was hard for them when they made the move too and I told her that we've been managing ok, but it's just really tight budget wise right now because rent and all our bills are due in the first half of the month. I'll feel better once we have our emergency fund established again. Please help us get through all this, Abba.