Take a Deep Breath

This is something I found myself doing often today.  The morning went fine, I got an actual phone call from my husband.  He's going to be in a different area for a while, but not too long.  I was glad to hear his voice over the phone.  I guess it seems a lot more real than a fuzzy in-and-out internet connection.

I took Stryker to the dog park.  I got ready for work.  I ate lunch.  I made good time.  Everything was fine.

As I'm just starting to leave post for work, my check engine light comes on.  Keep in mind, I am driving the Civ because the CRV has no headlights.  The CRV is parked in front of my parent's house.  I am thirty minutes away from them.

So I think, ok.  On a scale of 1-10, I wasn't concerned about the Civ having problems.  I knew it needed to be looked at but nothing to be scared about.  On the scale I was about a 2 of panicking.  I kept driving.  Automatically, I knew something was wrong.  The car was having a hard time accelerating, jerking (not violently, but it wasn't something you could ignore) when I lifted my foot off the gas petal.  Oh sh*t.

Now, for those who don't know much about Lewis, you can't really get to the surrounding downs without taking the freeway.  Especially from North Fort.  You can go through main post, but there's a lot of lights.

I'm almost panicking.  Yeah, I sort of went from a 2 to a 10 real fast.  I was afraid I wasn't going to make it anywhere fast...If at all.  I call my dad.  Tell him what's happening.  He instructs me to come home (I think I needed someone to tell me what to do) and change out the cars again.  Call work and let them know that I'm going to be late.  Thank goodness my assistant manager is level headed because I was still about a 9 when I talked to him.  He was fine with me being late, just as long as I got there safely.

Long story short....Well, I know it's not that short...The Civ is out of commission for the time being.  Even as the CRV sat in my parents driveway for two days and my dad kept saying he'd change my headlights, he never did.  Thank goodness I don't work late the next couple of days because I'd be driving in almost complete darkness.

Have I mentioned how awesome it is right now that my husband is gone?

On another note, when I was at my parents house this guy driving a SUV with a trailer pulled off the side of the road right down from my parent's house and was unloading wood into the ditch.  He stuck a "free" sign on it.  My dad was not happy about this, and instead of doing something that was...Well, logical to me... He goes inside, grabs a camera and starts hiking his happy butt down the street.  I am sitting there just saying "dad don't.  dad please don't.  dad no.  dad..."  to no avail.  This normally works on my husband.

It does not work on my father.

So he goes down to talk to the guy, asking him why he's doing this.  Apparently the guy has an ad on Craig's List telling people he had free wood and decided to basically dump it on the side of this busy two late road (the guy lived close by) for people to stop by and pick up.  He told my father that if no one picked it up, he would come by and get the rest of it.  Dad basically told him that that was okay (hello, I see this as illegal dumping), just that he was going to take pictures (which he did...even of the license plate) and if it wasn't gone by whenever time he would call whoever you call to report that kind of stuff. I made sure I kept an eye on dad this whole time -- I mean, the guy had a couple people with him.  I know I couldn't have done much if anything happened -- besides calling 911 -- so I waited to leave until that was over.  Ugh.

All the wood was gone within about 30 minutes.  The guy packed it all back up.

Ah, good times.

Other than that my day was OK.  Stryker didn't manage to chew anything up that he shouldn't have while I was working my long evening shift.  Work was busy.  I often found myself taking deep breaths to keep myself from going crazy.

For everyone that I promised to stop complaining....  That didn't last long, did it?  Haha.  Go figure.

Tomorrow is a new day....