Mixed Blessings

For every bad thing that can and does go wrong I think there is a silver lining. Today has been no exception.
The high today in Dassel was around -1. With the wind blowing out of the NW it gave us a windchill factor of -11. It's cold out side but it feels balmy inside. Although the temperature is only 64 degrees in the front half of the house the back half is quite comfortable. SO no complaints about the cold because it could have been a much worse day today- I could have ended up walking in the cold. Yesterday I noticed that some liquid was dripping from the underside of my car. It didn't concern me because of the road wash on the underside of the car but this morning it did concern me when I saw a puddle under the car. It was coolant/ antifreeze. That is never a good sign. I opened up the hood to see where it might be coming from and discovered that it was running off of the lower radiator hose. So I needed to determine weather it was the hose or the water pump. I would have had to dig through the snow drifts to get the car into our shop or I had to run the risk of taking the car into town and having it put up on a hoist where we could actually find out what was going on. I decided that either way I would have to go to town to get the parts to fix it so I decided to head for town. With a prayer being said I took off and made it to Cenex without a problem. I even got the car right in which is amazing. They put it up on the hoist and took a look at it. The mechanic felt very confident that the culprit was the hose. It is our payday today and so I asked him if he would have time to fix it as long as he had it on the hoist. He told me that he would order the part and get it taken care of right away. To make a long story short I am out of $100 tonight but I had a nice warm car to come home to a nice warm house and I didn't get stranded out in the cold at 11 O'clock at night.
Although the day has been a day of ups and downs, I am very thankful that it has ended in such a pleasing way. The mechanic showed me the hose and it was shot- just a matter of time before I would have been out in the cold.