Lisa's Adventure

On one day on May, the nine years old was accidently shot and killed by the gun when her father pulled it out of the bag. We did not point our fingers at him. There were some people in our neighborhood wanting to help their family so they were asking around on a neighborhood Facebook page for suggestion on how to help them. Some planned a meal train for some people to sign in and the couple arranged a community garage sale for a weekend. The pastor living a block from us suggested us use his nearest church parking lot about a mile and half from our home and I joined the group to set it up and pack them away when the sales were over. The guy donated us his three portable storage boxes on the parking lot. Some one arranged a candle light service with other pastor to perform it one evening at the school south yard. I asked around on a page to see if someone could sign for Dick and me for the service and someone said that she was happy doing it. It was nice to meet a few woman. There were several people attendeding the service along with the family. After the two days of garage sale and many people donated their nice stuff for the sale, we earned $2200.00 for the family. When someone was at Home Depot and Lowes asking them if they had something to donate and they donated several plants and flowers for the family. Several people got together to plant them at the family's home. The family stayed at the motel for few night before coming home. We are blessed to have a great neighborhood and we keep in touch on a Facebook page.
I asked around on it for a trustworthy car repairman and someone referred us to her friend, names CJ who texted me asking when to see our SUV transmission problem. we have been keeping it in our garage for two years collecting some spider webs because we didn't have money to have it fixed. When I was talking with him, we found out that we had more problems with our little car, Focus. I found a very bad rear tire showing some treads so had to change it for a spare tire and had CJ look at them at his home and sure enough he said they were bad. When we stopped by his house, his wife provided us some cans of cold Dr.Pepper. We decided to have our Focus fixed first since the the ball joints were very bad and worn. After getting a set of new tires and had the alignment done on Dick's payday two days ago as we were able to skip the home loan payment this time after we refinanced it two weeks ago to lower the interest charge, we met CJ's wife, Brandi at a Auto Zone part store and we bought the new ball joints, strunts. inner and outer rods. They didn't have the ball joints so we had to order them and hope to get them today. So the new tires and parts cost us more than what we pay for our skipped home mortgage payment and have no other money for our SUV transmission repair and will wait till extra $$ appear someday. We are retired and living on our fixed incomes (I had to retire early due to illness that takes so much energy from me and also no one hires me because I can't hear. I'd like to work part time someday.) and not rich enough. We don't have anymore credit card account since 2008. The online finace management courses we took helped and brainwashed us against using the credit cards. I'm very happy and so glad that we took them. It's very nice to buy new tires and parts from our of our pockets and of course, it's the first time we bought them without borrowing money. Love it!
We had decided to have new Michelin tires instead of cheap tires because we had cheap tires and they caused so much problem. They kept running out of air and had to put more air in at Walmart auto shop. Never again we will buy anymore cheap tires. The new tires we got on Wednesday made our drive very smooth and we still have to drive very slow till we get the ball joints and shruts replaced. While we waited for the new tires, we suffered a cabin fever syndrome. We did some large Lego sets to build to keep the syndrome away.