So, one of the things that I would like to do on this blog is chronicle times in my life when I feel like I have felt the hand / influence of God in my life. I seem to recall hearing someone talking about this in church – for some reason I keep thinking it was Heber J. Grant – he would read his father’s journal and see the various blessings in the day to day life of his father. I may be completely making that up but it seems to have some nugget of truth.

Anyway I would be remiss (and other weird phrases Mormons like to repeat over and over again even though nobody really talks like this – kind of like I would like to bear my testimony or inthenameofjesuschristamen all one word or “nourish and strengthen us” etc.) if I did not share what happened yesterday.

As I mentioned the other day our van limped into the driveway on Saturday evening. We were able to take a look at it and determined that it was the van’s drive belt that had come off. The belt itself looked to be in good shape, but my car-savvy friend and I (well, mostly just him) were not able to get it back on all the assorted pulleys and such.

We were able to jump it and get it running enough to take it to Midas. I also took in my new tires so that they could put them on. And early Monday morning I called in and spoke to my main man Don who is now the manager over there (last time he was the assistant mgr. I think). I told him what was up and he said that he would take a look at it and let me know. Don and I have worked together several times in the past. And of course by work together I mean that I take him my car and he works on it. We first kind of connected a few years ago when I had brought one of the cars in for something and we got to talking about Madeira – he grew up there so he said that he’d give me a break. He has continued to take good care of us and has been very reasonable price-wise.

So he called me around noon and said that he looked at the belt and there was nothing wrong with it, and he also inspected the pulleys and said they were fine. He had put the belt back on, put the new tires on and rotated them, and also changed the oil. I had been meaning to start changing my oil myself but just hadn’t gotten around to it and so while it was there I decided to pay a few extra bucks to have them do it.

I asked him how much he had charged for putting the belt back on and he was like “Oh I didn’t charge anything for that”.

Okay – so hold that thought as I move on to some separate stories from the day. I will tie them in at the end.

Today was the drop off day for one of Carolyn’s diaper studies at P&G. Basically they pay you to evaluate new diaper ideas. These ones were pull-up kinds and so we were supposed to evaluate them and check for leaks or red marks and such. We also had to weigh each diaper (on a provided scale) and log that. For that we get 3-4 weeks of free diapers plus a $55 gift card. It can be a hassle but not too bad. So today was the drop off day so we picked up a $55 Meijer gift card.

But that is not all, oh no that is not all. Randomly we got 2 checks in the mail from TriHealth, one for $30 and one for $20. We still do not know what they were for. They were addressed to two different of my kids, too. Does that last sentence look weird? I was just trying to use all three variations of to/too/two correctly in the same sentence. Anyway… :-). The best we can come up with was some sort of visit where we paid a co-pay where we didn’t have to so they refunded it.

So the net of it was that after worrying for a day and a half that something was seriously wrong with the van, to the tune of us having to figure out a way to come up with at least several hundred dollars, we ended up being able to pay Midas with the money that we had already budgeted in auto maintenance (the total ended up being like $58 something, after $5 printable coupon, natch). And maybe you can write off the $55 gift card since we knew we were getting that. But to also randomly get $50 in the mail for no explicable reason?!??! Call it a coincidence if you want, but to me, it’s the hand of God taking care of us. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands