Just a few short moments ago, my husband left for work again. I pray that he's careful and safe... I caught what he would have called a "second wind," basically meaning that I am not tired enough to revisit dreamland just yet. I do this every morning--get up to tell him to have a great day and be safe--or at least I did before November.
On November 13, 2009, a Friday, no amount of "be safe" would really help. We were suddenly given a crash course in what people living here call a 'Nor'easter'. We had never seen this phenomenon, much less the amount of water that came with it. I won't tell the whole story here, but the short version is that I spent circa 3-4 hours in water up to my thighs, the reason being that at 6:30 that morning, my husband Drew called to say that our only vehicle had stalled out on him. Thinking that he had just run out of gas, I dressed for the rainy weather, and walked out to meet him. When I arrived on the scene...the scene was flooded, and the flooding had gotten as high up as inside the cab of the truck. He still had to go to work, though... Someone came out to pick him up and I treaded the waters with him to the rendezvous point. After he left, I went back to the truck and took a photo...
The truck sat in the water for about 3 hours. I eventually found some really nice people who were just standing out in the water helping other people get their vehicles out by pushing. They pushed our truck to higher land. We later found other friends to help tow it back to our apartment. We began searching for a mechanic, but we knew that we would be unable to afford the repairs for a few months.
A few weeks went by, and some of my husband's shipmates would drive him to and from work, but eventually, the ones who were taking him back and forth were re-scheduled and unable to continue doing that. As a result, another friend offered to allow him to borrow his car as long as Drew paid for the gas and oil changes. We took care of the first oil change and then Drew drove it to work... At 4:27am that first morning back to work with the borrowed car, it was raining. He lost control of the car and slammed into a wall. He could've been killed. I awoke that morning to a phone call from him saying that he was ok, and what happened... I was so shaken, but I didn't really get to fully recover for several days. I spent those days staying up as late as possible trying to work out our finances. I was running on constant adrenaline, crashing at any time between 3-5 am, sleeping, and then back up and at it again by 10am. It was tiring. Meanwhile, he needed to stay on board the ship unless he had more than 24 hours off work. The reason being that he didn't need to be late to work any day of the week. I bought 30 day bus passes and took the buses to the shipyards to meet him and hang out some evenings. Other nights, I would take a bus just to pick him up...trying to make sure that we milked the days for whatever time we could get together.
Because of these things, as well as a few banking goof-ups, it has literally been one thing after another for us since we got married and moved here... These have been the experiences of our attempts at trying to bring some semblance of order to our newlywed finances. But, despite it all, I can honestly say that I do not regret having wed when we did. One of Drew's friends recently suggested that many couples would have just split up over some of those same situations. I was reminded just how blessed we really are.
I am happy to report that with some help from family, and a lot of sacrifice on both our parts, we have been able to straighten our finances out. We're finally able to see the light at the end of the financial hole, lol. I'm looking forward to seeing where we're this is going to take us...
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