We've been going through a round of 'weird Murphy'.  Just dumb little stuff.  Which I appreciate, versus the big expensive stuff.  But man, what a pain.

The door handles are breaking off of the kids' car.  Someone on SA has a 2-year newer car (same model) and had mentioned.  I vaguely recalled some weird repair and looked it up when the first door handle broke.  Yes, it was the door handle.  Not just one, but all 4!  I told this to MM and MH but they just weren't taking me seriously.  MH was telling me how that's ridiculous and we were only going to replace the one door handle.  When...  MM(20) texts us that another door handle broke.  🙄

Oh yeah, that was how we found out that our forever mechanic closed down their shop.  😭😭  Writing was on the wall re: my last post.   It's just such a bummer.  I am not as confident about this car lasting many more years, without a trusted/conservative/low cost mechanic.  I have some homework to do.  

So we paid a bajillion dollars to another shop to replace one door handle (driver door) and MH just basically super glued the other door handle.  When he got the quote, he said, "No thanks."  He was actually just telling me this had worked very well on his chair.  & then the chair broke (again) later the same day.  But it had held up for some years and MH just wants to limp the chair along.  So he was able to kill two birds with one stone.  

{Note:  The kids split the car door handle cost with us; we just split it 3 ways.}

Then DL(18) was cleaning out his room and noticed that his window had cracked.  What the heck!?  We don't know if it's been like that for 10+ years.  It's a decorative half moon window.  I will pick my (home builder) boss's brain later.  Hoping he tells me that happens all the time and why they don't use those windows.  & I mean, just hoping it's not something too unusual.  

I also got my Inivisalign rubberbands.   They glue the metal hooks on your teeth, for that part.  The two bottom hooks snapped off right away.  So I went to the ortho like 3 times last week.  It's not like I had any work to do or anything.  By itself, it's probably somewhat expected.  But it was just in the middle of all this crazy Murphy. 

Edit to add:  Just lost another metal hook.  These rubber bands are going to drive me crazy.  (As they replace them, they have taken more care and used a stronger glue.  So far it's just the originals popping off.  Fingers crossed.)

August & September are crazy expensive for us.  I just paid all the tuition (x2).  Middle class grants are sorting out late again, and so I am just pre paying the full sticker price and will see how things sort out later.  MM(20) at least has a grant estimate, which happens to match my estimate.  Mine was a "pulled out of my butt" number, basically.  Just rounded to the next $1,000.  Which was conservative compared to last year increase, but know they are continuing to increase these funds.  & that's the number that MM(20) got as an estimate.  I have no idea how useful that number is.  & I don't have anything for DL(18).  I had initially presumed he gets the same dollar amount, but have since learned that it depends on the school.  So it's just a big question mark at this point.  A question mark that might sort out in another 6 months.  (In the meantime, don't know if his tuition is $1K or $5K annually.  Either way is very reasonable, but I look forward to having real numbers to plan around.)

In other news, MH has a big movie project that he is working on.  That has to be a separate post later.  But because of this project we are going to LA next week.  So that is adding to some of the September expense.  Medical bills, travel expenses, etc., etc.  Thankfully MH should be back at work and will have some paychecks by then.