The Aviator

When Michael and I first moved in with each other we were paying $500 a month in rent and the only expense we were paying on were student loans and a credit card I’d taken out in college. Life was good.

In June of 2006 we had a bad storm go though town and all the car dealers were advertising “hale damaged deals”. So Michael who was driving around his grandpa’s purple Ford Probe got the idea it was time for him to get a new truck, rightly so. Long story short, we didn’t get the $14000 hale damaged one, but the truck that was twice that much. Looking at our life style at the time it doesn’t surprise me. We could afford the payments and he needed the hauling power.

Well then life happened. We decided to buy a house in the blink of an eye; one of those “it’s a good deal, how could we pass this up” thing. I quit my job and went back to school. And my poor dear husband got laid off twice in less than two years. You do what you can when things don’t go as planned which means taking our more credit cards, borrowing money from family, that you still haven’t been able to pay off, home equity loans, and defer student loans.

I had begged him to try to sell the truck for sometime now, with no luck. I saw it as the quickest way to save money and a pretty big chunk of it monthly. Well for whatever reason, manliness, pride, etc. he held on to and we worked around it.

Early February we “pulled the goalie” on the contraceptives and went for it, so it was late March when I first took a pregnancy test that showed us that awesome little plus sign. Since then, Michael has been doing all in his power to trade in the truck, sell the truck, and/or somehow drop the payments, and get a more family friendly vehicle. I’m impressed. He was going to purchase a Lincoln Aviator, with monthly payments half of what we were paying the other day, and all I said was that I trust him. So far we still have the big hunk of fuel sucking metal in our driveway, but I feel we’re heading in the right direction. He’s doing what he can to become a dad and that is something I feel honored to witness.