Isn't this a peaceful photo?

What I am about to write about isn't exactly full of peace.

We started off yesterday about to run many, many errands in a short amount of time. If we had our own t.v. show it would probably play some rinky dink music in the background as we ran around like chickens all over town.

Or something like that...oh no, I'm building this up too much. But basically what happened was a series of unfortunate events.

We had some "To-do"s, on a list. Written on a list, and crossing them off....like, picking up vegetables from a farm, something we do once a month, and going to the drycleaners, and blahblahblah items on a list that you just end up doing on a Saturday because you don't really have the time to bother with during the week.

Well, we as we pulled into the drycleaners parking lot, Steve hits the brakes, and it sounds like an elderly seagull's dying song unto the world just basically saying it's time to end things, he's through. That is not a sound I look to hear when someone is braking their car, nor do I like it when it is my car, nor do I like it on a 1,000 degree day with the clock ticking and the errands that just keep coming and coming and suddenly your car is making a sound like that.

That kind of thing makes a small reflex of my own force me to utter unspeakable things, or at least to just say "Ughhhh really? Really? Really." Which doesn't HELP anything but it makes me feel like I did something...other than just making a gutteral sound that doesn't do anything.


(I just did that very same reflex because someone - who may or may not have been the driver of that car yesterday - just accidentily cancelled out of this website I was in the middle of writing on. He wanted to check our bank statement, I said, ok, just don't "x" out of this, I didn't save it yet, and he said, "ok", and when I came back, he had "x"d out of it. SO I had to write this whole thing over. The first time it sounded a little bit different, but I guess it's still ok. Anyway - back to my main story)

We called up Steve's dad, aka the amazing mechanic who saved us yesterday, and he said we can just leave our car at his house and we can take his minivan on the rest of our errands.

So this was amazing news - except that the minivan's AC went the way of the dying seagull and our brakes and the do do bird and so there was no AC and the heat was at least 1,000 degrees not even including heat index or whatever that's called and I'm not even counting the fact it felt like your pulse itself had a fat person sitting on it so it would slow down into near death heartbeat rates it was so heavy out there.

But we thought we would be fine. We said, "We will just put the windows down! We will be great."

We were so silly then.

We were on our way to a wedding about a half an hour away and the hot wind was blowing in our faces and we realized a few things.

"Steve?"

"What?"

"Steve?"

"What? I can't hear you."

"STEVE! We need to get wrapping paper. The present!"

"The present! It's in the red car."

The red car. That would not help us one bit.

So, as the sweatmarks gathered faithfully upon our very nice outfits, painting patterns on our backs, arms, underarms and butts, we devised a plan to get to the church, drive back to town to get the gift, wrap it, and then drive back to where the reception would be. Some of this was communicated with hand movements, as it was difficult to hear each other with the wind whipping through that little van that could.

Then we were trapped with no hot wind. Road work everywhere. Road work, and car accidents, and stop lights. It was enough for me to remember lyrics to Alanis Morrissette from the mid-90s when she said something about being already late, and a no smoking sign on her cigarette break. And then millions of spoons when she wants a knife, even though I guess you could hack at something for a while with a spoon if you really can't find any knife, although I don't know what would have happened to all of your knives, but anyway I'm straying from my story again.

And I almsot lost this story! My battery died on the computer. Great. That's my fault for calling Steve out on "x"ing out on my story earlier. Karma. At least It's here this time though. Anyway.

We got to the church EXACTLY on time. I mean so on time we walked past the entire wedding party that was waiting to walk down the aisle! I've never cut it that close before. My hair, of course, looked spiky at this point with a hint of beehive. The hot air had done wonders and I fully expect this new hairdo to make waves and Jennifer Anniston to be wearing it by next Sunday.

Anyway - the point is, we finally made it. And then our plan we had concocted worked, because all went well for the rest of the day. I even got to fix my hair and the brakes on our car got fixed, too.

But, I guess the whole point of this blog is, sometimes, when you just want a peaceful day, what you get is a piece ful day, when everything feels like it's just falling to pieces. I heard once if you say outloud what you want, the universe tries to give it to you. Maybe we should all be spelling out our requests, just to stay safe.