May 12, 2026

Anticlimactic

Our oldest put in the work with his driver’s permit including studying the rules of the road through an online program, driving and logging a certain number of on-the-road hours with us as passengers, and completing a driver’s education program by driving around in different types of places under different conditions with a certified driving instructor (this one helps get us a break on very expensive insurance for him). He got his license this past Saturday and we were very excited! This achievement is one we are super proud of and we got to celebrate it with our firstborn on his first try!

It spelled freedom for us. Freedom from the 20 minute drive each way (with in-town traffic, traffic lights, and sometimes school buses on their routes) to get him to work. As the sandwiched we work, then we jump in the car for our second shift jobs of running kids to their activities (and on top of that I run my parents to their appointments a few times a week). So another driver in the house felt like a slam dunk!!

But in the last 6 months two of our aging SUVs left us. One left my husband sitting and was towed away for parts and the other seemed to be getting there so we sold it to a dealership who buys any car for what seemed like peanuts. My husband got a one year old SUV that is very nice to replace his and one perk of being Sandwiched under one roof is that I have been able to drive a little old car that my mom has had for decades (with excellent gas mileage) that is just around to take her to appointments because she doesn’t drive but also cannot get up into an SUV right now as only one knee has been replaced and the other is still bone on bone. So my little free rental is available to me and allows us to drag our feet a bit on getting another car for me.

Unfortunately though there’s a big cost to our potential freedom from driving our oldest to work. He needs a car to drive. Sometimes he drives Mom’s old junky car that thankfully keeps running but we have to have enough vehicles around to get everything done for that to happen.

Here’s my rant over text to my mother-in-law about this being an issue on Monday because I was severely hoping she would come take the big one to work and rescue me from having to run him (but I promise you she has been driving our kids like it’s a part-time job for large stretches during the last couple of years and asks for nothing in return so I don’t blame her for after telling me for not volunteering on this one). Here’s my text rant: “Unfortunately after telling me for years that I give the kids too many choices, (my husband/her son) decided to majorly drag his feet on getting (oldest son’s) car stating that it was because (oldest son) did not seem interested and because (oldest son) didn’t like what (husband) & I wanted to buy for him. So now we have no car for (oldest son) since someone bought the one (husband) finally chose yesterday and we are short on cars. Dad is going out of town today so I cannot use his SUV while he is at home and now (husband) is back to work in person (impeccable timing after he has been working from home for 2 weeks and 1 day due to a stomach virus followed by minor outpatient foot surgery) and has a meeting and cannot get home in time for me to use the (SUV) so that leaves the little white (car) and (oldest son) can’t take that because I need it to take (daughter) to Tumbling. I don’t want to bug you to take (oldest son) because I can be back in time from there to take (daughter) and you’re already helping other nights. Just venting because (oldest son) could take Mom’s (car) himself and bring himself home if we had another vehicle for me to take (daughter) to tumbling but instead it’s an hour and 20 minutes of my time to run him there (driving both ways) and back (driving both ways) simply because we didn’t really try to buy a car in April knowing when the driving test was.”

It’s a time of musical cars and yet another first world problem. It’s expensive and time consuming to get more vehicles, but without them this season of life tends to become even more of a challenge. Crossing my fingers for a vehicle for the oldest one soon!