The crazy continued for the rest of the summer. We finally decided to try a family trip, to visit my sister. The morning we were to leave, I got up early to do laundry and get packed. As I was washing my hair, I felt the water flow slow to a trickle and I immediately shut the shower faucet off. My husband was teaching a ninja camp all day and after I checked the breaker box, there was little else I could do until he got home to check things out himself. We had to drop the puppies off at the boarding kennel, pick up ninja camp t-shirts and deliver them to our karate school, do laundry in town, grab lunch and get water and other supplies from the store, then take the laundry home to finish packing. We did the dishes using bottled water and we filled the toilet tanks with bottled water so we could flush. Later, my husband could not find the reason we suddenly had no water and when we returned from our trip two days later, he called the company who had installed our well, almost twenty years earlier. They confirmed our worry – we needed a new well pump and a new expansion tank. So, by the end of the day and $2400 later, we had running water again. (This was after having a flood during this past year that ended up corroding the pressure regulator switch on our holding tank in the crawlspace which had to be replaced)
My husband picked up the dogs from the kennel and one of them had the runs. Within a few days they both had diarrhea (at one point it was firehose shooting out of their butts diarrhea!). I figured they’d caught something at the kennel and being puppies, they couldn’t fight it off easily. Simon seemed to get better then worse, then better again. Ash did the same. We would withhold food for most of the day until their stomach settled down, then slowly give food again. They’d seem okay for half a day or so then soft stools would come back. On Friday it was time for my husband’s and my week long trip without the kids. It was to celebrate our 25th anniversary which occurred earlier this year. The girls (our two oldest) told us to go on our trip and not worry about anything. So we did.
For our first two nights away we had reservations at Mackinac Island. We were planning to stop and see my father-in-law on the way up (he lives just south of the Bridge). Right around mile marker 308, we heard a terrible noise, and pulled over. Flat tire.
Completely, utterly flat. On the highway. On a Friday night with truck after car after trailer after motor home flying by us, barely moving over, each passerby causing the car to shake, my heart to pound as I looked down at my husband lying under the Suburban and prayed that he would not be hit. The spare tire was up under the Suburban in the back. Where winter road salt and miles of dusty dirty roads that we live on had taken their toll. The latch wouldn’t release. My husband hammered, pounded, jerked, jimmied, and swore. The cable for the tire came down, but not the tire. We looked at the cable. The spring that was supposed to hold it to the tire was broken in half, rusted.
One gentleman stopped to try to help. He had a small toolset, none of which worked for this situation. He lay on the ground near my husband, getting dirty, trying to help, until my husband finally just thanked him for stopping to help (one person out of the thousands that passed us), but that we didn’t want to hold him up from his own trip, so he left. We called a tow truck. That in itself was a feat. We were in a dead cell zone. When I could get a signal, I hurriedly searched for a tire repair or towing service and found no one open. Finally I came upon a towing service and called them. They’d be there in about 20 minutes. We looked at the clock and compared it to the ferry schedule to the Island. If the tow truck came on time, if we could get the tire fixed at my father-in-laws fairly quickly, and if we had no more issues, we could make the 2nd to last ferry. With a delay on any of those, we might still make the last ferry to the island. Any substantial delay and the first night of our trip would not be on the Island.
After quite a while in Indian River trying various things, we realized to do it correctly, we needed some tools that we didn’t have and couldn’t get, since we had no vehicle to drive to get to the auto parts store. At this point, my husband took a large hammer and pounded the edges of the latch inward so the tire would drop. It also obviously destroyed the latch, but it was corroded and the spring broken, so it was no good to us anymore anyway. We got the spare on and were on our way again, arriving in Mackinaw City just in time for the second to last ferry to the Island where we had a very late celebratory dinner.
There were several other moments during the trip that we thought about packing up and coming home. Each time our oldest daughters would ensure us that all was well and that we did not need to come home. While we were gone, the puppies continued to have digestive issues on and off. Especially Ash, the youngest. She could not seem to shake it. Then my youngest daughter had another bout of excessive worries. No fever, no other signs of infection. Her big sister talked it out with her and was able to get her feeling better. (We’d been warned by our PA that things may ebb and tide with her behavior as she recovered.)
Then when we were hiking to see a lighthouse in an isolated area with spotty cell signal coverage, I got a cryptic phone call from the phone number of the mother of a girl my daughter goes to school with. I answered and heard my young daughter’s voice saying “Mommy? Mommy, are you there?” then the signal cut out and I couldn’t get it back. We were about 1.5 miles from the car, a storm had just rolled in and we were hiking back as fast as we could, getting wet from both the waves crashing up on the shore and the rain that had started to pour.
We finally got back to the car and drove towards civilization to get to where our phones would work. I would get a signal, then it was gone. I received a text from a different mother’s phone, again from my daughter, explaining that her basketball practice was canceled and she was riding home with a friend. My cell phone was the only number she remembered so she couldn’t call her sister to let her know. I pictured my other daughter showing up to pick her up and panicking when she found her gone. I could not get enough of a cell signal to call, but then I received a text from my oldest daughter telling me that our water had gone out again. 😦
I finally was able to get a text to go to her to tell her to try the breaker box, to buy more bottled water and that we’d call the well guy again. I also told her to tell her sister that their baby sister was riding home with a friend. Then I looked at my husband and said, “We’ve got to go home!” It was late and we found a hotel for the night, planning to go home in the morning, when one of the girls called. “Don’t come home!” was the emphatic message. “We’ve got this! Enjoy yourselves!” We debated, left a message with the well guy, and debated some more. Next day the well was fixed again – apparently the neighboring farms had been using so much water irrigating during the dry weather that they had caused the water table to drop significantly. Our well guy was able to lower our well pump about 40 feet and we’ve had no problems since.
This year, it seemed like every time we got through one disaster, we’d think it couldn’t get worse, and then the next one would come along. But the things is, when you deal with so many catastrophes and with serious illnesses, it really changes your perspective. All the things that were bugging you about normal ordinary life start to seem insignificant and all you can think about is if only things would just be normal and ordinary again.
I’ve finally realized though that this is it. This is my life. It’s crazy, yes, but it is a good life. Someday I’ll look around at my house with no shoes or toys lying around to trip over, no idiotic t.v. show playing too loudly on the tv, no crumbs on the counter where someone grabbed a snack, no lights left on or doors left open with house flies coming in, no arguing over a game – and I’m going to wish for these days again.
Because with all the things left lying around, and the crumbs, and the seemingly endless bickering comes all the wonderful things in life as well. These little beings who my husband and I were blessed with – that share our life and our love, and yes, make things crazy along the way are what we are living our life for. Every moment with them is precious because it will be gone way too soon and they’ll be off living their own lives and I’ll be missing the heck out of these crazy days.
“Don’t wish your life away,” Grandma used to tell me. “It goes by fast enough.” As I’ve said before, she was right! So, I’ve decided about the only thing I can do is to just embrace the craziness. I’ve started taking the time to open my eyes and see all those little moments that occur in between the craziness (or even during the craziness) and I’m holding on to them. I’ve found I’m more calm. I smile more. I sleep better.
Because it’s just a blink of an eye between this moment:
and this:
Or this moment:
and this:
Days turn to minutes and minutes to memories
Life sweeps away the dreams that we have planned
You are young and you are the future
So suck it up and tough it out, and be the best you can
So, we ordered it online and had to wait for the right weather (sunny but not too hot) and for a time in our schedule where both we and our friends were available to install the expandable liner ourselves. By then, we were well into July’s hot weather and very grateful to have a pool to swim in finally. Needless to say, we do not have any money saved towards a new stand up freezer yet.
Gina Karasek 