Two days into week 38 of my Transformation Day 2012 challenge finds me with some interesting things to report.
First, I have some good news to share. I’m down 1.4 pounds from last week, so I’m sitting at 247.6 as of this morning. I’m preparing for some trials over the next few weeks though, so we’ll have to see how things work out.
And that brings me to my next bit of news which isn’t so good. This past weekend brought the first dry days that weren’t work days for Fred and weren’t immediately preceded by rain. It meant that after working out some kinks with the mower, my husband was able to make some excellent progress on mowing, trimming, and brush-clearing. I was definitely disappointed because for the first time in many years, I wasn’t able to visit with my parents during Easter weekend. Easter Mass was awesome though, and Fred worked hard and had fun playing with his new toys. (He has an Echo string trimmer with attachments that allowed him to do about four hours worth of yard work in a half hour.)
Anyway, Fred had made such good progress and the property was looking very respectable. (For those of you who have any bit of acreage in the country, you know how it can get.) I had started dinner, and I was sitting in my office doing something at the computer when Fred came in. “I did somethin’ bad. I broke the mower.”
I asked him what happened, and apparently, he ran the front of our old Dixie Chopper ZTR into a stump that he didn’t see. (He cut down 3 trees a few weeks ago, so this was his first mow with the stumps rather than the trees.) Although he wasn’t going very fast, the impact broke a bunch of stuff under the mower (old welds that might have already been compromised long before we bought the mower that’s now 23 years old.)
Now, for those of you who might not understand the implication, here’s the low-down. We don’t have the ability to replace that mower. To fix it, we’ll be spending grocery and gas money (because we just don’t have available cash.) And if we used our 21″ push mower, there’d be nothing but mowing happening here at the Wittekind homestead. (We have 3.5 acres of uneven, sometimes swampy, not very lawn-like land that requires attention.) So my husband was understandably upset. He was beating himself up over the mistake that anyone could have made. I was so proud of him though. He handled it really well and didn’t let it drag him down. That made it a lot easier for me to get proactive in figuring out a way to get the mower fixed.
So how does this mower issue affect my Transformation Day goals? Well, it doesn’t really unless I let the stress get to me. Our food choices will be limited too though since we’ll spend as little as possible in order to afford an expensive mower repair. The good news though is that because we’re preppers, I have food in the freezer and pantry and we have stored fuel to fall back on. After all, it’s situations like this for which we prepare.
Using up our preps makes me pretty uneasy, but God provides when we provide for ourselves. I know in my heart that we’re going to be OK. We’ll just have to be creative.
And I thank God that it’s just a very expensive mower repair as compared to the loss of a job or illness or severe weather or (insert situation for which you prep here). It’d be easier if we had cash on hand, of course, but that’s not our situation right now, so we’ll work through this and come out better on the other side.
It’s funny because last week’s article about bartering had me thinking, “OK, do we have anything that we can swap for services? How can I trade to get something that might be more valuable to someone who can fix the mower? How can I trade to get a NEW mower?” So this rough patch actually has us being more creative than we would have been before when it would be easy to just shell out some dead presidents.
When I set out on this Transformation Day challenge, my main goal was to get healthy. The bulk of that goal meant I’d be focusing on my weight and on my food. Over these past months though, it’s turned into a lot more than that. I’m finding myself looking for any and every opportunity to make positive changes for all of us. This little setback, in my view, is just one of those positive opportunities disguised as something that really stinks. Moving forward rather than back is the way I’m claiming MY liberty!
Our mower has been in the shop too. Hopefully it should be back today. Fortunately it wasn’t too horribly expensive, just a short in the electrical system that was causing the battery to drain, so every time we would go to start it the battery would be dead. The shop went ahead and sharpened the blades too at no cost, which was very nice of them.
My husband found out on Monday that he is probably going to be losing his job in August. Since he’s been there 13 years he’ll be getting a good severance package, but it still has my stomach in knots. I’m going to have to get even better at practicing what I preach as far as prepping and frugality is concerned!
Regarding the mower, I talked to our guy today and it turns out the repair is going to run $250. Considering some folks could probably drop that on a used rider, and considering I don’t just have that cash laying around, it was hard to swallow. That being said, the mower guy said that as bad as it was, it could have been a lot worse, and he’s right. I’m grateful that it’s not any worse than $250.
Regarding job loss, that is HARD. I feel for anyone who has to go through that. What field is he in? Prepping sure does help, but there’s no way to avoid the edgy sort of feeling that you’re not going to have what you need. Some how though, it all manages to work out. I know that sounds cliche, but it really has seemed to work that way for me anyway.
Good luck!