Balance is what I’m trying to maintain. I have had so many ups and downs this past month or so.

About three weeks ago the car started sounding throatier. It went from ‘somewhat throaty’ to Yikes That Sounds Expensive two weeks ago when Sparky and I were coming home from the doctor. HRH dug about under the car and discovered that the flex joint that connected the exhaust system to the engine had rotted through, so I was essentially driving a car with no muffler, despite the fact that there was a lovely, healthy muffler system there. It was a fix HRH couldn’t do, so it had to go to the car doctor last Thursday morning. This was the most recent in a series of small things going wrong with the car. We paid it off this past spring, and we wanted to get through the winter with it before looking at a slightly larger car. If this pattern continued, I wasn’t going to feel comfortable trusting the car over the winter. It was ten years old, and there was nothing immediately wrong with it apart from the fact that things were starting to wear out, and constantly replacing them and not knowing how much it was going to be was stressful. We’d rather get a new-to-us car and know that a set fifty dollars a week is going to pay it off. So we started researching cars in earnest instead of idly, as we’d been doing for a few months.

I had Thursday off since my deadline had been Wednesday night, and HRH booked the day off work to take the car in to the garage. Right next door to our garage is the used car dealership that we’ve dealt with forever. And they had two SUV/crossover cars in stock that we’d been researching for the past few months. So we got to go kind-of car shopping together and take test drives! Part of me just wanted to trade the current one in right then before something else happened to decrease its value any further, and drive home in a new-to-us Saturn Vue or Dodge Journey. Well, we tested the Vue first, and we liked it so much that we only took the Journey out to confirm how much we liked the Vue. (The huge blind spots in the Journey were dreadful, and the engine just wasn’t big enough to haul the weight of the vehicle around without straining — no, thank you.) We sat down with the salesman and we discussed options and trade-in value, and we ended up deciding to buy it, doing the pre-sale paperwork right there. The Ion wouldn’t be ready before we had to leave to pick up the kids — the job was bigger than the garage had initially thought, which made us a bit anxious about the cost — so the dealership gave us a loaner car, and we agreed to pick up the new car Saturday morning.

Saturday morning came, and we took the whole family over to pick up the new car. And we discovered that the garage had comped the job on the Ion. Hadn’t we traded it in, the garage manager said? So it wasn’t our problem. Happy new car. We were completely blown away and are now trying to figure out a way to give both the dealers and the garage guy a treat to say thank you.

New car!

We took it over to Grandma and Papa’s house to show it to them and have lunch together. The next day we took it out on its first road trip, to spend the day at Upper Canada Village with t! and Jan. It was a lovely day, despite the chill and the showers and the lack of a real nap on Owlet’s part.

And another joy is that the first accelerated government payment for Owlet’s daycare tax credit came in last week. Here in Quebec we have 7$ a day subsidized daycare, and if you’re in a private non-subsidized daycare you can apply for a monthly refund for a portion of your costs, calculated using the cost of the private fees and your family income. The idea is that since the subsidized 7$/day daycare spaces are hard to come by, the government will now subsidize the cost of the private ones. Well, my refund was awfully large — larger than my fees, in fact — so I did some math and it turns out that the information the government is using is based on the cost of a full-time place, not part-time, and they’re overpaying me. So unless I wanted to get dinged at tax-time and have to pay half of this money back, I needed to do something. Well, I talked to HRH, and we decided to ask if we could send Owlet full-time, because we knew there was room, and with this monthly refund it works out to $7 a day exactly, which I can totally afford! The daycare director e-mailed me inviting me to switch Owlet to full-time just as I was sitting down to write to her, and so it’s all set: Owlet is now full-time in daycare, and everyone is thrilled, especially her. (Well, no. The lady at the deli counter in the supermarket today was disappointed that Owlet wasn’t with me. Owlet is her favourite customer, she tells me.)

I dyed Mum’s luxury yarn last week, and it looks AWESOME. It’s a stunning rust/terra cotta colour that just glows in the sunlight. I’ve never dyed so much yarn — remember, we’re talking 1700 yards, and about 13 oz of fibre! — or used so much dye at one time. It took 10 g of dye powder, when the most I’d used at one go before was 1 or 2 g, and I mixed the colour myself from two others. I hope she likes it. I have some touch-ups to do where the dye didn’t quite penetrate past figure-eight ties, and then I shall post pictures.

And a friend who is moving back to the UK has given me a pile of games, electronic equipment, books, and toys. I’m feeling particularly spoiled by life in general these days, and so very, very grateful for all our good fortune. I know we’ve been putting in our time this past year, and everything comes to those who work and wait, but the harvest — if that is the correct word, seeing as how that’s the time of year? — is so very appreciated.