Thursday, May 08, 2008

An Everything-Went-Wrong-Day

Okay. I'll admit right now that today was just a bad day all around. I am not going to make this sound fluffy, fun and frivolous so don't expect a frilly story. It was just one of those days where nothing went right and everything went wrong.

I woke up with a raging bladder infection and peed about 37 times from 8am until 11am. (I'm not kidding you.) That was a good sign my day was starting out bad.

Toby needed me to bring him some window cleaning supplies so I planned on taking a break from the bathroom trips and looked forward to having lunch with him over his lunch break. The kids looked forward to that a lot too and Landon and Janae figured out where we'd eat ('Caffeine's' (Cafe) on the Square) and what they were going to order (pancakes). I didn't care what I ate; I just needed a distraction.

No matter how hard I tried to get ready, I was in so much pain from the infection. My doctor called in a prescription and I kept calling the pharmacy to see if it was in yet. At 10:30, it was finally time to go for lunch so I headed out to the van with the kids.

It was then I realized that I had no car seat for Landon; the car seat was in a work truck with Toby.

So, I called our nearest relative to see if they had their extra car seat handy and while waiting for them to get back to me, I continued getting the kids in the car.

I went to start the van and what should I find but the battery was dead. Totally dead. Not even the power locks would work.

By then, the Car seat Relatives got back to me and told me that someone else was using their extra car seat.

Okay. So, I was still out a car seat and now a battery too.

Not only did Toby need his stuff and the kids had their hearts set on going to have lunch with Daddy, but I needed my meds! The UTI was almost killing me.

So, I called a neighbor to see if I could borrow their car for a jump start. No answer; they weren't home.

I called a nearby friend to see if I could borrow their car for a jump start. She said she'd be right over.

I called another nearby friend and asked if I could borrow a car seat from them. They had extra! I was in luck!

The Battery Lady came over and as I bravely wielded the mighty jump start cables, she popped the hood on her car. There was a loud snap and unfortunately, the snap wasn't the hood popping; the whole lever from inside the car broke off. Just a dinky little wire teased us with it's past ability to pop the hood while the plastic handle sat helplessly in my friend's hand.

By now, the neighbor guy was outside mowing and I decided to see if there was something on his truck I could break in the process of getting juice into our van's battery. He obliged his truck and in no time, the van was running strongly and no harm done to his truck.

I re-loaded the kids and ran up the street to get the car seat. I stopped at the pharmacy to pick up my meds and we were finally on our way to go get our dad.

When I finally found Toby, he was on the phone, quite distracted, in the bank parking lot. He thrust me a form to fill out for my new Debit card and I proceeded to fill it out, not knowing if I was the Applicant or the Co-applicant of the Applicant. While waiting for him to get off the phone, the kids and I sat in the van until the "empty" light came on for our gas gauge. Knowing I had at least 80 miles until I was really empty, I didn't worry too bad but I knew that this was just another Bad Luck Token for my day.

Toby got off the phone and told me he needed awhile to work up an immediate bid for someone. So, with my on-empty-van, the kids and I drove around Seward. After about 45 minutes, Toby was ready to go but I needed to bring my form into the bank and pick out a PIN number.

While "picking out" my PIN number, the bank lady had to hassle with our account because Toby's debit card had quit working, making my card more of a hassle to get. Finally, after making a couple trips into the bank, it got worked out and we were headed to the restaurant. By now it was 1:00pm.

We went to "Caffeine's" and found out they had a long wait. The restaurant was packed. So, we skipped down the sidewalk and went to another place instead. We ate very quickly since Toby needed to get back to work and most of our food went home with us in "boxes."

I dropped Toby off for work and headed back home where a lawn waited to be mowed and a ton of work had to be done before company. About 2 miles out of Seward, Toby called me and said that he forgot to take the window cleaning stuff out of the van.

I u-turned and headed back into town and pulled up to his truck just as he held up the supplies he needed from some hidden place in the truck: my supplies for him were useless; he already had everything he needed and didn't know that until then. Lovely. He did keep the roll of paper towels I brought him but probably just because he wanted me to feel at least partly useful.

We then went home and I mazed through a littered house, put Alex to bed and brought the other kids outside to work on the yard with me. The meds had kicked in by then and I hadn't experienced any Bad Luck Tokens for about 15 minutes so I thought it was time to get on with life.

To celebrate, I made reservations for our upcoming Mother's Day Weekend Get-A-Way and know that after today and all that happened, that weekend get-a-way will be more worth it than if I hadn't had today.

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there and may you find less reasons than I do to celebrate and enjoy Mother's Day this year. :)

3 comments:

Travis said...

Wow! What a day! At least your van never ran out of gas! I kept waiting for that line! A day like that will certainly try your patience.

Anonymous said...

It is good that you document such days. I can think of many in the past--especially when it caused my four year old to decide to run away. Fortunately he was found by his father who was coming home for lunch unexpectedly. My episodes made me very irratible that day, so I think that is the impetus for his going. We can certainly be thankful that not all days are like that.

Jean said...

Wishing you the very best Mother's Day today. Hopefully any more disasters will wait for another day to show up.