Tough Day

What a bitch the last 24 hours have been.

First some background. My oldest son is a 5th year senior in college, at a major Midwest state university. Non-resident from our state, of course. He got it in his mind he wanted to go to this school, even though we had zero clue how he was going to be able to afford it. Well, he set his mind to it, and between him and my wife they got him in, and got major financial aid for him. After the first 2 years, we weren't qualifying for as much financial aid, so he started on the student loans. Bottom line, he's sitting on about $50,000 of student loans. This is one hard working kid. He worked his tail off all through school. Was president of his fraternity. Worked in town. While his richer fraternity brothers were off partying on weekends, he's working. He is SO responsible, and has gotten SO much leadership experience between his fraternity experience and his work experience he will be a HUGE find for the employer lucky enough to hire him.

A month ago, he heard about an old Honda Civic being sold by the family of a fraternity brother. He scraped together his food money and bought the car for $250. He was excited, he finally had transportation so he could come home and see us (and his girlfriend) when he could squeeze out some time. The same night he brought it home he drove it to work, and somebody broke out the windows. It cost him more to fix that than he spent for the car. After he got that fixed, his radiator blew. Saved up again, bought a radiator, and friends installed it for him. The next day he starts for home and didn't get 10 miles out of town before the engine went out on him. My wife got a call from him. Our normally upbeat, always optimistic kid was crushed. He put ALL his money into this vehicle, almost $1000 now, and it's sitting dead on the side of the interstate. By now it's probably been towed by the State Patrol. We went and got him, and he's as low as we've ever seen him. I feel so sorry for him I'm sitting in tears right now. He's had it, and was planning on just letting the state impound the car. This is one of those things I just can't do anything about - I can't pay him for the money he put into that. I'm going to give him the hundred dollars I was going to spend on my wife's Christmas present. But as a parent, wanting to make it right and not being able to for financial reasons is a terrible feeling.

Yesterday I'm at the part time job, and my wife calls and tells me about the car breaking down, and says she's on her way to pick him up, 3 hours away. Then she calls back and says my youngest son needs to go to the emergency room because of an infection in his tooth that had the entire side of his face swelled up. So I had to leave work and take care of my youngest son. Nothing antibiotics and a follow up won't take care of, and he did go to the dentist today.

I won't even go into the mess at work today. It wasn't pretty.

If I didn't have a chance to let off steam last night, I'd be a basketcase right now. Actually, I pretty much am a basketcase right now anyway.