This has been, so far, one heck of a week. AND IT'S ONLY MONDAY. To be fair, my first traumatic event happened on Saturday, which was technically last week. And if bad things happen in threes, I should be looking for something else to catch up with me anytime now. I don't know if I can handle it.
This weekend was a big, fun Casey Family Weekend. All of Bill's aunts and uncles on the Casey side were in town because one of the Casey aunts was getting married this weekend. I headed down to my in-laws' house about an hour before the wedding to meet up with Bill so that we could travel to the wedding together. As I was getting off the highway in their town, I felt what has become an all-too-familiar thump-thump-thump...I was the victim of a flat tire. I found a nice empty parking lot to pull over in and got out of the car to check out the damage. I could see the nails (it was a definite cluster of nails) sticking out the tire and knew that the news was not good.
Luckily, I had my trusty cell phone with me, so I called Bill to let him know I was in town but needed some assistance due to the flatness of my tire. He told me he would finish getting ready for the wedding and then come down to help me out. Well, while I was waiting, I decided to get out the spare and the jack and the tire iron...most of which I could not find without the help of the owner's manual to my car. That Forester has all kinds of hidden compartments in the back, and the hold important things. Thank goodness for the map of the storage wells at the back of that handy book!
After I had gathered all my parts, I decided I would just get started. First off, I had to get the lug nuts off. Well, they had obviously been tightened with some heavy machinery because they were hard to budge. I finally settled for fitting the tire iron over each lug nut, standing on the tire iron while holding on to the roof rack, and bouncing a bit to use my (less than a few months ago but still considerable) weight to get them to loosen. Ah, success! Soon, I had them all loosened and was ready to jack the car up.
It's at this point that I am pretty sure I started to flash the passers-by. After all, it was windy, and I was wearing a skirt. And that is all I have to say about that.
Before long, I had the car jacked up and decided to take the lug nuts off. And then take the tire off. And then put the spare tire on. And then put the lug nuts back on. And then lower the car back to the ground. By the time Bill arrived, all he had to do was put the old tire back in the car and listen to me gloat about how I had done it all myself.
When I got to the wedding, I realized that I couldn't find my cell phone, and I was concerned I had left it in that nice, empty parking lot. I sent Bill back to find it. He couldn't. I searched through my car to find it. I couldn't. I happened to glance at the top of my car and realized that it had somehow survived the ride from the parking lot to the wedding, still on top of the car, and still in working order. Maybe my luck was turning...
Never mind that my father-in-law pointed out that the spare tire seemed to be on backwards. Never one to admit defeat, I just stopped behind the mall next to their neighborhood before heading home, jacked the car back up, took the spare tire off, turned it around, put it back on, and headed on home. Today, $267 later, I am the proud owner of two new tires and a newly aligned car.
But lest you think this is all the excitement I have had, I have to continue sharing. This morning, I fed the dog and went to get him a dish of water. When I turned on the faucet, there was nothing. Not one drop. It was much like it is when our power goes out, but the power was very much on. I immediately called Bill at work in Full Panic Mode, after having checked the breaker to make sure it wasn't tripped (it wasn't). Before long, he was heading home to try to get it taken care of.
I should mention here that the man the Casey aunt married this weekend was none other than the owner of the company that built our home. And he is already turning out to be a handy "uncle" to have around. He sent some guys over to check things out. They determined that the power in the house was not the problem. Therefore, they went to pick up some equipment so they could pull up our well pump, from the bottom of our 450+ foot well, to check it out. Luckily for us, there was an evident and easy-to-fix problem...all the way at the bottom of the well. There was a slice through a wire, and they were able to fix that and sink the well pump back down where it belonged. And we have glorious, cool, clean water running out of our faucets once again.
Life is good (for now)
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