Do you hear that sucking sound?

Its the sound of every last cent being drained from our bank account. Seriously, 2008 has not been a stellar year for finances here at the Lopresti household. Andrew's car is in the shop again this week. At 94,000 miles, we can probably still milk it a little bit before having to buy a new car. No car payment is nice, but what's not so nice is the frequency in car repair bills this year. And already, on both cars combined, we've spent about $2500 since the beginning of the year. Not including the new bill this week.

However, that's small potatoes compared to the next issue. You know its probably time to call a contractor when you have mushrooms growing out of your bathroom floor. Yes indeedy. We have a mushroom farm in our master bathroom. Our house is only about 12 years old, but due to shoddy builder construction, there has been a leak over the years from the shower into the floor. The crappy linoleum flooring has been discolored and we've suspected for a long time water was getting in there. We figured we'd do the bathroom sooner or later, when we won the lottery or something. Then about two weeks ago, we noticed a small water stain on the family room ceiling below where our shower sits. Then the mushrooms started sprouting out of the grout by the shower basin. So that project has been swiftly moved to the front burner. On the bright side, I've always wanted a pretty bathroom floor and a nice little seat in the shower to make leg shaving easier.

We are meeting with contractors all of this week to see what we're looking at. I only hope I don't fall over and/or vomit when we get the estimates. But what can we do? If we don't do the repairs, we could end up showering one morning and falling through the ceiling right into our family room. And that would be no way to start the day.

So maybe we can get Andrew's car fixed up right to last until sometime later next year. And hopefully we can get the bathroom torn out, replaced, fixed and all pretty by the end of this year.

And maybe, just maybe, 2009 won't suck (the money) quite as much.