Oh boy. What a weekend. To begin with, I had to work for the third weekend in a row.........I had to do a "overnight" stint for my job, which meant leaving my poor husband to feed, amuse, and entertain himself starting on Friday evening. Saturday I came home and discovered that "amusing" himself included rearranging the living room furniture. It was actually really nice! Then he told me the reason he did it was because he discovered FLEAS had invaded and made themselves at home in the carpet - thanks to our three cats. Great.
Off to town to get Frontline for them. We came home to discover that the three week old chickens had discovered that they could now fly out of their box and play in the kitchen. They've started to stink a little bit, also.
Sunday morning we took my sister's horse to a trainer and I felt guilty about leaving him, even though he was fine.
That afternoon, my little sister came over and we were "hanging out". I decided to clean out the small log building we are turning into the chicken house, which was full of glass jars. We took a bunch to the dumpster (no rescued chairs this time) an put them in the recycling box. There were a lot of gallon-sized jars left, so we boxed them and put them in the truck to move to a storage barn on the property. Tractor implements were parked all around the barn, and I pulled up to the door anyway. Then I decided to try to get closer (LAZYNESS) and turned the truck around to get a better angle. Suddenly, Noelle yelled "STOP"! Too late. I heard the door scrape against some machinery. Oh boy. So I threw the truck in reverse and started to back up. That's when Noelle said,"..............ok, I think you need to .....STOP!!!!!" Too late. There was a huge explosion. At first I thought I had destroyed one of the tractor implements. I jumped out and looked, and saw that I had backed over blades from the huge 8-bottom plow in the tall grass I hadn't seen. They were stuck into the tire wall; this in addition to the scratched door..........
I shut it off and headed to the house where Kevin had been on the phone. He, standing in the driveway, had seen the whole thing.
I was frantic. I just knew how mad he was going to be.
"It's just a tire, it's ok," he said, smiling. (Oh, yeah. It's "OK"?) His smile dissapeared when I showed him it was one of the new back tires. If it had been one of the half-bald front tires we were going to replace this week anyway, it wouldn't have been so bad. This was baaaad. Tires for our heavy-duty farm trucks cost about $200 each. This was not a good day. The truck was wedged against a part of the plow that stuck into the door paint. Noelle and I grabbed it and pulled it away from the door while Kevin carefully maneuvered the truck out of the hole I had put it in and back down the driveway to the house.
Luckily he had a spare - bald - but it would do for a few days until we got new tires. As he was putting it on, his expensive impact gun died. Then he was a little mad; understandably. The door, however, was not dented, only the paint was scratched. "I can buff that out and touch it up and you'll never know it happened," Kevin assured me. I still felt stupid.
Food fixes everything, so I went immediately to the kitchen and started to cook. I had a London Broil to grill, green beans simmered with butter, and a rare thing for me - curly french fries. I don't eat french fries anymore, but this seemed like a good day for some. I also whipped up some creamy lemon bars.
We were standing in the kitchen, and Kevin was saying "I'm not mad; it was just a tire; We were going to have to get two new ones anyway; It's ok." A hug and a kiss couldn't even make me feel less stupid.
Then he got a phone call: a friend with a restaurant called to say the back deck was falling off her store; could Kevin come fix it? As he was getting off the phone, I got a call: the donkeys I look after were loose and running around the neighbor's yard; could I come down and fetch them back to their pen?
When I went to "fetch" the donkeys back, I had to lead them through a pasture full of cows. They looked like black hippos in a sea of green grass so tall it was up to my shoulder in some spots, and the cows seemed to just float along on top of it. As I set off, Kevin warned me: "If you get cornered by a bull, drop your bucket, flap your arms, back away, and try to find a spot in the fence to jump out!" (Thanks, my love! Soooooo comforting............) but I got through the field, and the bull only stared at me over the tops of the grasses as I tried to sneak through with the donkeys. Then we had a 3/4 mile walk down a dirt road to the donkey's home.
In spite of it all, I was filled with peace, as I wandered down the road, with the donkeys in tow, as the sun was setting over the valley before me. The birds were singing all around, and the wildflowers were blooming on the sides of the road. The grass smelled sweet, and I was walking off the french fries I had just eaten, so life was good.
I have to buy four new truck tires for a small fortune on Wednesday, but life is still good, and I learned another farm lesson: I will never, ever put the truck anywhere near a piece of farm machinery again.
2 comments:
I sooo know what you're talking about. There's nothing I hate worse than inadvertently costing us money we don't have. For example, the other day I gave in to weakness and requested that we order in for some company we had for dinner. I messed up the phone order and when J went to pick up the food, the bill was $70!!!! I about died. Took me days to get over it.
Yeah, and the thing about food is, you eat it and it's gone..... I've done stuff like that before. At least, with the tires, we were going to have to replace the front ones anyway this week; plus, this is my week for getting paid, and I'd been working overtime so we have the money, but we *don't* have the money, you know? Luckily, the tire man is a buddy of Kevin's, and he's letting us pay half now and half later in the month.
It seems like stuff like this always happens when we have other pressing bills.... like car insurance at the end of the week....... Oh well. Also, we won't have to buy tires for over a year now.......... unless I back over something else. Shouldn't have said that.....:)
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