Oh, Erin, what a nightmare! You're right, that's what emergency savings are for, but it doesn't make it anymore fun to spend emergency savings on emergencies. I'm glad you had it available, especially for your dog's sake.
My poor kitty has racked up a lot of money in vet bills over the last couple of years. Two surgeries, visits to the kitty dermatologist (as I call her) and now we seem to have her condition under control through medication which is great but those stupid meds cost $70/month and she fights so hard against taking it. I hate spending that much on a cat, particularly seeing how much she hates it, but it's the only thing that helps and she's well worth it.
Bridget, I don't know where to begin on the subject of your dbf. Ugh ... you own a business and regardless of what he makes when he works, you have a steady job and keep everything running. He's just a moron.
On the subject of my family party, I don't think I can truly get out of it. For one thing, I only ever see my sister and her kids once per year and the kids are growing up so fast. My niece is 16 already, and my nephew is 12. You miss so much in between. They'll be at the party and since it's a weekend and actually a good time for me to see them, doesn't make a lot of sense for me to be somewhere else. But I do resent being the only child who lives near home and there's an expectation that I will be participating in things my brother and sister are never asked or expected to do. Every mother's day and father's day I take my parents out to dinner, so with four of us including DH it's a minimum of a $60 meal. One mother's day after DH lost his job and finances were tighter, my mother commented on how my sister and brother send a card every year costing perhaps $3. Over the past ten years, I'd probably spent about $1200 on mother's/father's day where my brother and sister had spent about $60 each. She said I should consider I'd paid my dues for a while. I actually confess I took her at her word and didn't take her out last year or this year. They were totally fine with it.
Oh, and when I asked DH if he thought the party sounded as unpleasant as I did, he thought I was overreacting, but he did complain about the parking situation and then added, "well, we're the young ones so we can just park really far away and hike in. We'll park lower down on the mountain so we hike up to get to the party and down to get back to the car." So if the party wasn't inconvenient enough, I will now be hiking. Which means that, since the only shoes I own are either flip flops, ballet flats, or clogs, I'm going to have to buy some shoes suitable for hiking halfway up a mountain. And then I'll have to break them in before actually hiking in them. This is getting worse by the minute.
