I'd like to issue a formal challenge...

After some careful consideration, I'd like to issue a formal dispute to that age-old proverb..."Mo Money, Mo Problems". I think many people will agree with this.

If I had "mo money", I wouldn't have to put all of my weight (and that's a lot of weight) into opening my sliding-glass door every time I need to let the dog out.

If I had "mo money", we would have an oven that doesn't take over an hour to get halfway to the temperature we desire (not an exaggeration). We would also have a stovetop with four working burners, rather than the one and a half working burners we have now.

If I had "mo money", I wouldn't have to buy a new bottle of power steering fluid every three weeks for Kimberly's car...because I'd either have the leak fixed or we'd just buy a better car.

If I had "mo money", I wouldn't have a basement full of old, dog-pee-stained carpet.

And

If I had "mo money", I wouldn't have to walk next door to take a shower or go twosies, because I'd have a septic tank that wasn't busted.

Don't take this the wrong way...I am blessed beyond what I should be. I do have a house, a car, a job, a sweet baby, and a smokin' hot wife. I have a bed to sit on and a computer sitting in my lap on which I can bitch about such things. I don't now, nor have I in the past 5 years considered myself poor. We can pay all our bills, and we'll be able to pay for the septic tank repair, but we'll just have to put off those the prospect of fixing those problems that fall a little lower on the priorities list. I like takeout, and straining to open the door is good excercise. My life is faaaaar from miserable.

This may be selfish, or it may just be a simple observation about life, but it just seems that there isn't one point in which everything is fine. If it isn't one thing, it's another. I guess that's what makes life interesting, but honestly, it's much more fun when the thing that's going wrong is something like being busy at work, or not being able to decide what to have for dinner. It isn't so great when the thing going wrong is any one of problems among the laundry list of "things-that-cost-a-whole--lot-of-money".

So, at the next meeting on the Dorris Business Deck, I'll raise the issue and take a vote, officially calling Schymanski's on the notion of "Mo Money, Mo Problems".

Because if I had "mo money", I'd still have 99 problems, but poop coming up from the shower drain in the basement would not be one.