Stranded

It's Sunday. The day before school starts. I dreaded this day, but not because of school. I knew our girls were ready and eager. I dreaded this day because we were going to have yet another open house. At least this time we had a real estate agent to manage the people and pay for the advertising. All we had to do was clean the place and disappear. I dreaded cleaning the home from top to bottom yet again. The home was pretty much in good condition, but there's company clean.........and then there's open house clean. Open house clean anticipates nosy visitors looking in your closets and drawers. Open house clean means climbing on the roof to clean the skylights and to remove branches that have fallen off the tree. Open house clean means hiding your trash can and stashing the girls' bikes in the shed. It means tucking away all those little things you use every day (like our computers and cords) and knowing that you will just need to get it all out again as soon as you get home.

It wasn't that bad. My hubby and the girls pitched in and in a couple of hours, we managed to stash everything out of sight except for furniture, decorations and wall hangings. Our plan was to take the girls to the movies during the open house, after a short stop in the park to show off the girls to Dad's high school classmates from 30 years ago. The night before was his class reunion.

We went to see the movie "Shorts". Please avoid this movie at all costs! I want my 89 minutes of life back. It's bad enough that I get to see only kid's movies, but really dumb ones are a whole 'nother level of torture. I found myself thrilled when Chloe asked to go to the bathroom. "I'll take her!" I quickly announced before Dad could beat me to it. I guess the payoff was at the end when Chloe announced, "I really liked that movie." Well, at least somebody did.

After the movie, it was already time to go home. We decided to stop off and go grocery shopping (note to self: avoid shopping for groceries on Sun eve.)so that I could pack lunches for the first day of school. Chloe still doesn't eat more than 18 items of food, mostly brown, beige or white. Despite my tone of writing, we were all in good spirits and having a nice time together. As we pulled out of the grocery store lot and into very heavy traffic, we heard the all-to-familiar "CLUNK". That's the sound of your transmission going out. Here we were in the middle lane of a busy intersection with no gears, except "reverse". We learned that lesson from the last time our transmission went out(different Chevy Avalanche), and we didn't realize that "reverse" still worked. Dad flagged cars to go around us, while I called AAA for the tow truck and the highway patrol for assistance getting out of the road. As it turned out, we had just enough break in traffic to back our way over to the side of the road. Dad called his friend to transport me and the girls back home (in a different city), because I wasn't going to try and fit their car seats in a tow truck. I unloaded the girls, carseats, crayons (did I mention it's almost 100 degrees?), my purse and camera. Well, I didn't want my camera to go to waste, so I took this opportunity to take a picture for posterity. The other photo with Dad and the girls didn't come out and I am not in the mood to Photoshop it into place.

It all turned out OK, except for all the bills we will incur. At least it gave me a story to tell. It's alright if I lost you three paragraphs ago. I just needed to vent. Next up, First Day of School!