And How Was Your Weekend?

I hate complaining. 

 

I really do. 

 

I’m totally okay with sharing your heart about a difficult circumstance, situation or incident, but I don’t like whining or sniveling. I really try to avoid it in all my “social media,” but I do realize that I fail and whine miserably sometimes.

I read something a while back on Twitter, and it made me really mad. I wanted to blog it out, but it was one of those that got away. The person Tweeted something along the lines that we have done a great job of making caricatures of ourselves (online, I mean). Since I try to avoid a lot of negativity, what kind of Pollyanna caricature have I made of myself? I think maybe I’ve done a bit of a disservice too, because twice in the last couple of weeks people have made wildly inaccurate statements about me and my life. I was shocked, really. I thought, “Oh gosh, have I put that kind of pseudo-perfection aura out there?” Those that know me well probably just snorted out loud. There is not one shred of perfection anywhere near me. Christ is and remains the only good thing about me.

Anyway, I think I’m rather self deprecating and honest. Maybe I’m not so. Maybe with the attempt to be positive, I’ve created a caricature of myself. Or maybe not.

I definitely have the rambling thing down pat. (And the overthinking thing too.)

I said all that to say that I really do hate to complain. And I’m really not complaining here. I think I’m processing. Outwardly. Again. And being honest.

 

No Pollyanna here.

I was really excited about doing Vacation Bible School this week. I love kids, I miss being with them and I love this sort of thing. I was pretty busy last week getting everything done so that this week could be just VBS, and that’s it. Saturday was a day that I was just going to finish up the last minute stuff. 

 

Things were going along so very well, until about 3 o’clock.

A few weeks ago the hydraulics on the van’s back lift quit working. I was fine with using my vice grips to hold the door open, being the country girl that I am. (fine. used to be) I knew I’d be using the van a lot this week, and I really needed that door to work. I was super proud of myself, since last week, I went to two different auto parts stores and found the parts I needed. Allen said he’d help me replace them, and I assured him that I’d been told that it was a really easy job.

So. As I was in the garage waiting for Allen to finish up what he was working on and come outside, I decided to go ahead and get a jump start on our project. I was simply poking around, looking for where I needed to unscrew the lifts from the body of the van, when the lift popped off the van and the door smashed down. I partially got myself out of the way just as the door slammed down, tearing the vice grips off the prop, causing the back windshield to smash. Into a million pieces. At least.

I spare you all the details, but I spent a good hour in the floor of the kitchen sobbing. I couldn’t believe it. My arm was in bad shape and I had a few cuts here and there from the flying glass. My mom came and looked at my arm, and we all decided to wait until Monday to go see the doctor. She brought me a wrist support thingie, and after she wrapped it up, I had to face the facts that my arm might really be broken.

I’ve never had a broken anything. So break an arm now? 

 

Oh, did I mention it was my right hand? 

 

Yeah, it was.

I fell apart a bit. I was mad. At myself. I was mad at the stupid van. The van I didn’t even want. My old van never would have tried to cut me in half. It’s back door worked fine. (Yes, ten other things on it were broken, but that back door was in perfect shape.) I was mad because I realized again how much I hate accidents, because they are things I have no control over. I really hate that. I could not fathom how I was going to spend six weeks in a cast. I was not happy. And I knew that now I couldn’t do VBS. I didn’t know how long it would take to get the van fixed. I didn’t know if my arm was broken. I was mad about that. 

 

I really wanted to do VBS.

Sunday I managed to get myself ready for church with my left hand. (Try brushing your teeth with your left hand. Go ahead. Try. Unless you’re left handed, in which case you should try with your right hand.) We also had our small group get together after church. I was excited about that, aside from it being *outside,* but I was dreading having to fess up to my impulsiveness almost killing me. It was, in fact, fine. Another lady there had broken her arm, and we laughed talking about all the things it’s impossible to do with one hand, never mind using the left hand for everything. 

 

It was good to spend time with our small group, too, which I love dearly.

After our get together, we piled back into Allen’s car, hot, sweaty and ready to get home. We were all cranky, and even though I mostly have pretty great kids, smashing them in the back of Allen’s car brings out the very worst in them. We had to go pick up a new phone for Allen. 

 

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. His “everything that has to do with work in the whole world is on this phone” phone quit working on Saturday. 

 

Before the Big Disaster. 

 

So we had to go get a new phone.

As we come out of the phone place, we pile our hot sweaty selves back in the car, and the car. won’t. start. I’d love to say that we dissolved into a fit of “what else can happen this weekend?” laughter. But we didn’t. 

 

The kids and I paced up and down the hot, sweaty sidewalk while some kind soul came and jumped us off.

And then we went home and had a great rest of the day. Right? N.o.p.e.

As we came to a stop sign a couple of block from the house, the car just quit. Stopped. Turned off. Refused to turn over. Just clicking noises.  And there was still no “haha can you believe this?” laughter.

 

I actually would have most liked being able to say, chop some wood, at that point. 

 

Or sledgehammer some old drywall in a remodeling project. 

 

Or use a punching bag for the first time in my life.

A nice man with a mullet pulled up to help us. Now I include that little factoid because I actually admire a man who can rock a mullet. Nothing says, “I don’t care what the world thinks, I wear my hair the way I want to” like a mullet. 

 

It would be like me rocking out some Mom Jeans. (Go ahead and Google it. ) Or some retro 90’s hair. Or something like that. So I like mullets. I admire the men who wear them proudly. I could use a dose of “I don’t care what you think, I’m wearing this.” 

 

No actually, maybe I have enough of that…

So anyway, Jay, aka Mr. Mullet, gets out in the blazing heat and tries so hard to get us jumped off. He tried for a good fifteen minutes. Finally he and Allen decide to push the car out of the way and Jay would take us home. 

 

We pile in the back of the Blazer he drove and Jay apologized for not having any air (which he really hated, since he was remodeling a house right around the corner and he’d been driving around a bit and it was weird because he saw two girls broken down just yesterday right where we were, since he passes by there every day on this way from the house he’s remodeling and he used to run motorcross but he didn’t know anything about those bikes, he just had mechanics, which is weird, since he knows a pretty good bit about cars, but he drove those motorcycles a long time ago and didn’t all this land used to be dairy farm land? He could have sworn it was, but he couldn’t be sure since he moved to Panama City in 1995 and just had to move back because of the economy and…) 

 

Did I mention we were only about 1/100th of a mile from home? As we pull up on front of the house, Jay side swiped our mail box, and Allen said later had our mail box gone flying across the yard, he would have been convinced that we were firmly intrenched in the midst of a Chevy Chase movie.

 

Thankfully the mailbox swayed but held firm. 

 

Sweet Jay was still talking as we piled out of his Blazer. 

 

I briefly thought that Jay might be lonely, and I hoped he knew Jesus. 

 

He was the kindest stranger I’d met in a while.

Allen called a wrecker service, climbed into our hoopty of a van with no rear window and went off to meet the wrecker. Luckily there is a garage literally next to our neighborhood (paints a nice picture, doesn’t it? I promise, it’s not as bad as it sounds) so the towing bill wasn’t too *coughcough* bad. 

 

Ironically the mechanic was at the shop doing something random, so Allen got to talk to him. He promised to get on it first thing Monday morning. 

 

(My contribution to help this whole situation was just getting in the bed, pulling the covers up to my eyeballs and watching old episodes of “Wipeout.”)

I don’t think I’ve ever been so ready for a weekend to be over. 

 

Allen wryly said it was all because he was actually home on a weekend. 

 

I sweetly asked him if he minded going back to work so we could avoid any additional drama. 

 

Against my better judgement, I decided not to go back to bed at 7 pm to thwart anymore catastrophe. We watched “Book of Eli,” which was good, and I made it to bed with no more issues. 

 

Whew.

Monday was as full of promise as the last two days had been of turmoil. Allen’s car was a quirky issue that was easy to fix, so that was good. My arm turned out not to be broken, which is most awesome. I did have a briefly awkward moment with the nurse, though, who just before she began taking the x-rays of my arm asked if I was going to have any more children. I just looked at her blankly, completely unable to answer that question. As I stumbled around, trying to think of why in the world that question threw me so, she quipped, “Let’s just tie this lead apron around your waist and protect those eggs just in case, shall we?” 

 

It was one of those moments where a thousand thoughts flew into my head at the exact same time. The first thought that squeezed itself into first place was, “Do you have a lead apron to wrap around my head? I do use my brain, believe it or not…” 

 

Why was she only worried about my ovaries? 

 

Does radiation not affect my beating heart too? Oh, anyway…

The arm’s not broken. Only bruised. Which is a miracle straight from God.

 

I did hesitate when the doctor asked me if I wanted any pain meds. (I’m kidding, Mom.) I said no. He did say that he wished he could write a note to our insurance company and tell them that we’ve met some sort of magical deductible with him these last two months. 

 

Wishful thinking.

 

Good thing I covered up those ovaries. I may need to sell them to pay all these medical bills…

The van also now has new glass in it too. That’s good. And I drug my mother out with me yesterday to replace the hydraulic lifts that caused all this mess in the first place. 

 

She was less than excited.

 

I think her exact words were, “Did you not learn what God was trying to teach you the first time this didn’t work out?” I shushed her and sure enough, we replaced the dang things. I made me more mad at how easy the whole thing was. 

 

Or should have been.

So that leaves me with what do I learn from all this? 

 

What the heck is the take away?

 

I cannot let this weekend go without learning at least ten things. I’m going to ponder this and come back tomorrow.

I did literally almost snicker out loud at the bank Monday morning, when the unsuspecting bank teller pertly asked, “And how was your weekend?” I sufficed with a quick, “Oh, fine. How was yours?”

 

I should send her the link to this post.

And oh, and if you made it through this whole thing, you get a prize. Seriously. You are awesome.