Is it November Yet??

October has been the month from hell for me.

First, my kids both have birthdays in the same pay month. For that reason, I generally try to keep spending to a minimum in this month. This October, nothing has gone right.

My daughter, when backing out of the garage one morning early this month, broke the rear view mirror off her car. I decided to pay for the repair out of my pocket. It was only a couple hundred dollars, and I didn't want to turn it into the insurance company. Little did I know, that was just the beginning.

Later the same week, my refrigerator quit and the drains in my upstairs bathroom became clogged to the point where we couldn't take a shower up there. Both had to get taken care of the same week. Ugh.

Back in February, I committed to running the Chicago Marathon with some friends. There was no backing out, even though I did absolutely zero training for the race. SO, the day before the marathon, my friends came up and picked me up and we went to the Expo.

After the Expo, we were checking into the hotel and getting ready to go to dinner. I noticed that G had brought his shoes in the same Columbus Marathon bag that I had packed my shoes into. Problem, there was only one Columbus Marathon bag in the room. A quick call to my kids confirmed it, I had left my shoes at home. After dinner, we were off to Sports Authority to buy a new pair of shoes. $100 when I normally buy them online for $80. Later, when I checked the receipt almost a week later (I didn't look at it before, just shoved it in my bag), I found that they had actually charged my card $140 for the shoes.

So, I ran the Chicago Marathon in the 80+ degree heat, with zero training and a new pair of shoes. Suffice it to say it was ugly. I finished an hour and 45 minutes later than my normal marathon time, but I finished. I was glad to be done with it, and too stubborn to stop until I finished. The beer at the finish line never tasted so good.

Later that evening, we all got cleaned up and went out to celebrate:

All of that pain was worth it, we had a great time.

When I got back from the Marathon, I found that my son's computer has a bad hard drive. One. More. Thing.

One more week until November, it can't get here soon enough...