Did I Need Something Else to Stress About?

After the work we put into the clean-out this past weekend I felt a keen disappointment that we were stalled by the registration fees. Actually being in the trailer and sorting through the detritus of another family's vacation past (plastic Presidential place mats, holiday decorations, an orange moo moo) my enthusiasm for getting the project done and setting out on some adventures of our own had only been heightened. On Wednesday night I must have had a powerful dream because I woke up on Thursday morning with one thought in my head, "My Ireland Money." In 2008 I was given a clay money jar, called a Terramundi, as a college graduation present. It came with a little card on which you were to write what you planned to save for and on that little card I had penned, "My trip to Ireland." The jar had some coins in it but mostly held paper money. A cash graduation gift from my sister had been the first offering and I had been sticking the odd bill in whenever I had money left over at the end of my month. As my friend Jim just recently quipped, the state of mind between optimism and pessimism is realism, so all day at work I weighed the possibility of actually getting to Ireland, in an economy that has rendered my husband unemployed, against the reality of using that money to register the trailer and start the refurbishment. I was once a Pollyanna but circumstances have made me a realist. I said nothing of my decision to Paul because he would have tried to talk me out of it, but instead, on Friday morning, I woke up, put on my bathrobe, took the jar off the shelf in our den, wrapped it in a dish towel, went out my front door and drop that thing on the concrete walkway without a second thought. I counted the contents on my kitchen table, $800 in cash, $25.40 in coins. Wow...$825.40...I was impressed. As I was sorting out the coins I found that the jar also contained two small silver coins that must have been inserted by the manufacturer of the jar. On one side of the coin was a web address, which I noted , and on the other side was the saying , "Celebrate Your Journey Today!" Hmmm...I felt as if my decision had been instantly validated by the universe. I took $500 out and tucked it into my wallet, got showered, dressed and headed back to the Auto Club as soon as it opened.
At the Auto Club I was assisted by a different agent, a young African-American woman. We chatted a bit about the trailer and my adventures at the DMV. She said, "Let me see what I can do," as her fingers flew across the keyboard. "How does $412 sound." Sounded great to me. $49 less for Ahhhnold to waste! I went back to the house where I found Paul at the kitchen table having a cup of tea. I dangled the registration tags in front of him. "What's this?" he asked. After a brief explanation he seemed upset that I had literally smashed my dream of going to Ireland, but when I said, "Let's go get her on Saturday," he was all in. Later on Friday night I logged on to the website to order myself a new Terramundi jar. I had put the surplus money in a martini shaker, with one of the Terramundi coins, and as I read about the Terramundi jars online I realized that each jar is only supposed to contain one good luck coin. I had put one in the martini shaker and had the other in my purse, intending to put it in one of the drawers of the trailer as a keepsake. I'm a so-so believer in signs from the universe...but having two good luck coins in my money jar must mean something, right?