I called my aunt early this morning to get the final details on her cook-out and learned it had been changed to Sunday. DRAT! It may have been a good thing, though. I had a rough night last night. The boy went to bed late, got up twice during the night, and slept late this morning. I, on the other hand, woke up at the crack of dawn, having banked only three or so hours of sleep. I asked if there was anything else she needed us to bring and she said to bring some buns. Double DRAT! I didn’t allow for a trip to the store in my carefully laid out schedule today, but that’s out the window anyway, right?
With the cook-out postponed, Owen at work, and my daughter off mending fences, I decided to tackle the boy’s wasteland that once was a carpet this evening. Nope, I still hadn’t gotten around to cleaning them, but today I finally bit the bullet. Figured I could get his knocked out and since we would all be gone tomorrow, go ahead and give the living room a lick or two since no one would be here to track them up, then run out to the store to get some buns. We are poor folk, by the way… can’t afford to have them professionally cleaned. However, when I fetched the carpet cleaner from the carport, I realized just how nasty my daughter had left it and it took at least half an hour to clean the stupid thing. I didn’t allow for having to actually clean the carpet cleaner before I could clean with it, so that put me a little behind schedule.
As I started making my swipes across the carpet, I noticed it didn’t seem to be sucking up much water. I went over every inch of the machine to make sure I had put everything back right, trying it again and again, and still couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Grandpa always taught me that when something isn’t working right to follow the cycle of events from beginning to end and you would figure it out what’s wrong. Ok… “so we have a container with water and solution here that goes through this tube here and sprays through these jets onto the floor… these brushes swish the carpet around and the water is sucked up into this chamber… the water then flows through this tube… AH HA!” There was a huge rip in the return hose! What a piece of crap! It is only two years old! At this point, I’d already pumped out about 1/3 of the water and had to get it sucked up somehow, right? So I got the bright idea to tape it, but had to find some electrical tape. There went another 15 minutes or so that I didn’t allow for just to find the tape and another 15 to squeeze my fat, stiff fingers in around the stupid hose again, and again, and again to get the hose wrapped snug.
Even after all my effort, it still wan’t sucking as well as it should have so the actual cleaning took almost 2 hours!! Naturally, I didn’t allow for that, so when I was finally finished, I was too worn out to even think about going to the store. I’ll have to put that on my long list of things to do tomorrow.
Oh… I left that part out! Since the cook-out has been changed to Sunday, Owen will be off work and will be getting his daughter for the day and going with me (we don’t travel well together… he likes to think I can’t drive and every driver on the road knows he can’t!). Also, my daughter and her fiance are playing nice this weekend and now he wants to go. On top of that, my sister and her family will also be going now that it is on a day they have free. With car seats and booster seats, we are now up to a three-vehicle-convoy when the plan this morning was just me, my son, my daughter, my mother, and the new grandbaby. FIVE PEOPLE! We would have all fit in the Jeep! Now, there’s ELEVEN people going in three cars. We’re not visiting at this point… we’re invading! Of course, my aunt is thrilled at the aspect of having us all and did initially invite each of us, but I wonder if she’s done the total headcount with our family and hers together? Didn’t she say “little get-together?”
So in the morning, one of us will have to go to the store and get some buns and one of us will have to pick up my daughter, the fiance, and grandbaby (or else there would be FOUR cars). Owen will have to pick up his daughter right before we leave, and we all have to cross our fingers that my sister will arrive here on time so we can all leave together. I usually sleep until about 7 or 8 a.m., but we plan to leave around 10 a.m., so I’ll have two hours or so to fix breakfast, shower, dress, get the boy cleaned up, take care of one of the aforementioned chores, wash the dishes I was too tired to wash tonight, load the car with stuff for the picnic and toys for the kids (also too tired to do tonight)… ummmm.. am I forgetting anything? And people wonder why I tend to cancel out at the last minute? It is because of all those things I didn’t allow for!
