The week of Murphy

Murphy's Law, if it can go wrong it will.

Sorry, but this post is as much of a vent as a post.

That's pretty much what this week has felt like and I'm quite glad it's over. Really, after Friday night, it's been ok, but next week is my birthday week (everyone should celebrate all week, right), so, I'm sure it will be better.

Since Mrs Carole was in Florida this past week, I worked on juggling work and Mallory at home. Thankfully Megan from next door came over until noon on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and if not, I'm quite certain little in the way of work would have gotten done.

She was also teething like crazy for the first 3 or 4 days of the week, which also made for total
Unpleasantness.

I was also trying to get all the crap ready for Relay for Life in Friday, which we've been planning for months, Team Red, in honor of Grandaddy.

I had also been looking forward to Wednesday morning because while Jennie to cleaning lady was here, Bean and I were going to go to the Y so they could watch her and I could have an enjoyable workout, both swimming and running. Not so much.

I looked at the pool schedule at open swim was open until 8:25, then swimming lessons started. I thought ok, I can get there at 8, have time to swim and then run for 3 miles.

We get to the Y right at 8 and I take Bean up to daycare and....she stinks. Major poo. Free daycare doesn't change diapers so we go in the bathroom, it's on her back, it gets on me, it's awful. I get it all cleaned up the best I can, drop her off and make my way to the locker room. Thankfully I just wore my clothes over my swimsuit and when I finally got into the pool, 8:15, I only had 10 minutes. That was enough to do a few laps past my 250 yards, so I went with what I had time for.

Then squirmed out of my wet suit, pulled and tugged on my running clothes and was off for 3 miles, maybe 4 on the treadmill.

At mile 2.47 the gal from day care showed up. Uh oh. Mallory has been crying nonstop for the past 15 minutes. I told her it was probably teething and I'd be up in a minute. So my leisurely workout didn't go as planned, not a bad workout, just not as long as I had hoped.

Ben was also gone Wednesday and Thursday night because of tractor and combine issues in his territory, so our plan of him taking the travel trailer to mom and dads Thursday night so we could start setting up at 8 am Friday morning wasn't going to happen.

Apparently Ben had mentioned my distress to AgriPower over the whole travel trailer/relay issue and they offered to have one of their guys come up Friday morning and take it down, ok, as long as it gets down there in a timely fashion.

Not really. He, Pete, who I referred to as my pseudo husband for the day, wasn't able to arrive here until 11am. In the meantime I thought I'd try to save time and fill the truck up with gas because I knew I didn't have enough to get me to Elkton. Got in the truck with Mallory, turned the key and nothing, the battery died. You can only imagine the choice words I had. So I did what I don't do well, sat and waited with my hands tied. I was totally packed, nothing I could do now but wait patiently for pseudo husband to show up and jump off the truck and hook up to the camper.

When he arrived the truck started fine with a jump, thankfully! Now on to the camper.

We have this fancy anti-sway hitch for the camper that I haven't helped hook up in probably 2 years. Couldn't for the life of me remember how it all went together and of course since the batteries in the camper were dead, the hitch jack wouldn't work either.

So, I plugged the camper in to get the jack to go up and down and after like 30 minutes of struggle and about 3 calls to Ben, we finally got it hooked up. Of course it was already 95 degrees and we were both sweating profusely.

The last thing was to plug the electric/brake plug into his truck, it just would reach his plug with no slack, it popped out as soon as he turned just a bit in the driveway. He said he would just pull it and put his flashers on, at this point I didnt care, if Pete was ok with it I was game.

Mallory was great through all of this. She sat in her pack and play in the house as I was in and out checking on her and by the end she had curled up and gone to sleep, so thankfully, something was easy.

I put her and Tucker in the truck and down the road we went, leading the way for Pete. I called Ben to let him know we were finally on the road and told him about the plug issues, which he freaked out. So, I said, call Pete, don't vent to me! So, at the gas station I was going to pull into to fill up anyway, we had to pull off and see if we can figure out how to get more slack in the power cord.

Thankfully the truck restarted when I cut it off to fill up, amazing. And there were tools in Ben's truck so Pete could loosen up some stuff that finally gave us enough slack to keep the camper plugged in turning and going down the road....finally, that took about another 30 minutes.

The remainder of the trip down the Nachur and across 68/80 was pretty easy, I really thought things were going to come out pretty well. We get to the High School and got our spot, got in the right spot pretty easily and then went to unhook the camper.....

The ball would not come out of the hitch. We raised the hitch jack, we lowered it, then it totally stopped working. We sprayed WD40, we tried to pull the pin, too much weight. We looked, we thought, we couldn't for the life of us figure out why it wouldn't release. We jiggled, wiggled, jumped, etc, all in the 95 degree heat.

Thankfully I had called Susan ahead of time and had her meet me at the High School so she could watch Tucker and Bean while we got the camper situated so she just went on and took them to Mom and Dad's since this didn't seem to be going anywhere fast.

Finally we decided we were going to need a floor jack and see if we could lift it up more to release the ball. Called Dad, Susan brought us the floor jack. We never could get it in the right spot that wasn't putting too much pressure on something that would break, so that didn't do anything.

We decided to put it under the ball, jack it up enough to release some of the pressure to hammer out the pin in hopes we could just pull his truck forward and pull out of the hitch. Nope, was moving the entire trailer. Wouldn't pull loose.

After all this time the jack finally started working again, we raised and lowered it some more and the release on the ball finally let go and Pete was finally unhooked from the camper.....at 4pm. I was hoping to have everything set up, a freezer of homemade ice cream made, showered and ready to be back here at 5:30. Obviously that wasn't happening.

Pete went on his way, I set up a few things and headed to Mom and Dad's, got the pop corn popper and brought it back to the High School and then went home and showered.

Mom, Memaw and Aunt Sharon had made extra ice cream, so my freezer wasn't a big deal, so we got there around 5:40, not too bad.

Of course stuff still wasn't as organized as I liked, but we got it set up, and got things rolling.

Our theme was to sell things grandaddy liked so we had home made ice cream, chocolate pies, popcorn, cokes and then we had frozen candy bars.

The ice cream sold out fast and we didn't sell as many drinks as I thought we would, but overall we did good. Mom, Memaw and Aunt Sharon were great ice cream sellers!!

I painted a few faces and the bubble blowing machine I got at Walmart earlier this week was a huge hit.

Mallory had a ball being the center of attention. She finally crashed in the camper in the pea pod and was out for the night.

Memaw left around 8:30 or so when the ice cream sold out and Mom wasn't too far behind her. Matt and Aunt Sharon stuck around to about 12 midnight or so and then it was just Ben and I. I think we went to bed around 1 or 1:30....there was no way I could stay up any longer after this cluster of a day I had....I was just exhausted.

Part of me felt bad for going to bed, and that because we were so busy with all the ice cream we didn't get to participate too much in the other events of the night, but overall it was good but I am soooooo glad it's over! I know Stef is, she was heading it all up this year.

Mallory got up around 6 am, and there were already a ton of people gone by then. I took her to Mom and Dad's and then came back to help Ben hook up the camper. Thankfully this didn't require much drama and a few minutes later we were packed up and headed to mom and dad's with the camper.

Phew.

The rest of the weekend was just pretty relaxing. Mallory and I both napped about 2 hours Saturday morning, Ben helped Dad cut wheat, Mallory and I lounged in the yard for a couple hours in the shade and then we had dinner.

I was ready for uneventful after all of the previous happenings.

And through all of this I succeeded in taking no pictures. Well, I guess I did take a few on Saturday when we were out in the yard that I'll post below.

Sorry.

On a better note, I'm declaring Mallory's first word is HI.

She says what sounds to us to be HI when she first sees you and she waves her hand at the same time. Seems like HI it is.

I'm ready for a much more normal week ahead of us and to have a nice low-key birthday.

























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