I bought my wife a new car. She called and said, “There’s water in the carburetor.” I said, “Where’s the car?” She said, “In the lake.”

And speaking of water problems, we just moved here to East Peoria two years ago. I have never seen such hard water. I called the East Peoria Public Works and said, “what gives with this water?” They told me a I needed a higher capacity water softener. Oh great, I said, just after all those moving expenses, buying a new house, losing money on the old one because of the housing market in Springfield, where we came from, and now I have to buy a water softener?

The wife had an idea. This is actually her idea to get around the fact that she maxed us on our credit cards and therefore can’t use them to buy things. Anyway, we went to Car Title Loans in East Peoria, where the value of our car, paid for already, gives us access to money in a hurry. We went online, filled out the application, and presto!, money to soften the water.

Given all our water problems, it’s a good thing we don’t live on a coast.

By the way East Peoria is near Pioneer, Peoria, Allentown, Morton, and Copper.