Stupid things rule/piece of junk jeep

So by now you must have realized that there is a pattern in my life....stupid things happen to me. Now I know that things happen to everyone, but I seem to be this magnet for crazyness (look who I'm married to. He had to be crazy to get into this).So......

Start on Friday night. Jessalyn is in town helping with Cranfest and hanging out with her friends. She asks if she can spend the night with a couple of friends at one of the friend's house. I think ok fine, that way she'll already be in town for Crantastic singers practice and Will won't have to bring her in Saturday morning. Saves gas. It works for me. Except the parents changed their minds. Of course they all came to me to beg "Can we please have it at Jessa's house and stay in the apartment for the night?", pouting lip and all. Me the big sap said fine.....forgetting that now Will has to bring them in for practise. (Believe me I'll pay for it for a while).

The next morning, I tell Will I'll take the truck and leave him the car (4 passengers do not fit in the truck). No problem. I've got a concert in the park to sing at after work, so I take my "good duds" to wear. Not thinking get everything into the CAR and get ready to go. Then I remember SHOES!
Good duds do not look like good duds when you are wearing white tennis shoes. So back into the house I go, run back out, get into the car. Start it up, back up. Crud....pull back forward and park car. Will needs the car. Get all my work junk and clothes out put them into the truck. Hike my body up into the truck (it's really, really tall) start the truck, back up the truck. SHOES! Stop the truck. Climb out of the truck and get the shoes. Hike back up into the truck and start on my way. NAME TAG.......tough. I go to work without my name tag which hangs in my car only to find I out I really did have my name tag which proceeded to then leave in the truckso that Will could take it to work with him Monday.

Go to work, it's raining all day. Just misting. More of a pain than anything. Head towards the park so that I can meet up with the rest of the group. If it rained we were supposed to have it in the church. Didn't happen. We sang in the rain. Actually the singers got to sing up in the gazebo, but while we waited to sing and listened to the others, we sat in the rain. Oh boy! Finally got up to sing. Things are going good. Sound systems having a little problem, but we keep going. We get to a song where I sing the lead and the solos and surprise, surprise!!!

I swallowed a gnat. Actually I breathed a gnat. Cough, cough, gasp, gasp, sing, croak, gasp, cough, croak, sing. Whew, made it through and lived. How can one tiny little bug cause so big a problem?

Fast forward to Monday. I'm ready to go to work. Ready to get there early except, I don't. I'm not sure what happened. It could have been the train that took forever that I had to wait for. It could have been the 3 people that stopped me to ask about Cranfest as I drove through town. It could have been the tractor that I was behind for miles without an opportunity to pass and he had her wide open. We were flying at 30 mph. No he could not pull over and let me by, it might hurt his tractor to drive in the gravel for 30 seconds.

Finally made it to work still trying to maintain my good mood. Sometimes it's really, really hard work to stay positive. I need to be in a good mood at work, they expect it and when I'm not, they notice. Terry says I'm always in a good mood and always happy with my life. There's a lot he doesn't know, but that's what makes me and my lifestyle different from them, joy. They notice it and every once in a while they notice and ask me about it. More and more I'm finding more chances to talk about Jesus and what I believe, but it's slow going because they are very lost, very defensive people. You tread lightly on that shaky ground with them.

Anyway, I digress. I get to work and they tell me that my jeep is in the shop and I have to take the piece of junk jeep (POJ for short). Of course as soon as he says that I know that I will have to put gas in it because most of the people that drive the POJ leave it on empty so that whoever is next can fill it. Since they all drive less than 10 miles per day, it stays on empty a long time. I get into the POJ and oh boy I can tell this will be fun. The power steering pump is going out on it, the brakes are shot, the thing smells to high heaven and I haven't even left the parking lot.

I start out on the route only to find that it pulls to the right really, really bad when you hit the brakes. Then I notice this loud bang each time I put it into drive. Then when you back up it drives itself in a circle. I'm not kidding you start backing up and the steering wheel turns itself. This is really going to be fun.

I make it through half the route dealing with all of the above and then I back into a driveway to turn around and the wheels lock up on me. Oh great! It's now taken me twice as long and there is no jeep to replace this one. This is wonderful. I finally get the wheels going and start praying. Hard. I baby the POJ through the rest of the route and finally make it back to the post office almost 2 hours late. I tell the guy who handles the jeeps that it needs a doctor quick. Now he knows that so far everything that I have told him on the jeeps that I have driven has been true. I am very particular about my jeep and he knows that I know enough about them to be able to suggest what is wrong most times. He gets into it and tries backing up without touching the steering wheel. It proceeds to drive him in a clockwise circle. Then he pulls forward and it does it's big bang thing. He drives back again and it again turns it's own steering wheel and suddenly my postmaster who has been watching the whole time yells stop and points at the front left tire. We all go look at it only to find it horizontal under the jeep. Evidently I have driven the entire route or at least most of it with a broken control arm on my left front tire and who knows what else is messed up on it. Thank you God. Now I get a chance to tell them about how I prayed myself back to the post office. Stupid things happen to me, but God is good.

Now for the other "good news" that we were blessed with on the Cranfest front yesterday. The banks started foreclosure on Jellystone and it closed it's doors yesterday. It was not due to close until the day after Cranfest, so now we have hundreds of vendors and visitors with no place to stay. They are trying to figure something out with the bank for that weekend, but so far no dice. Damage control started yesterday with continuation today. As far as I know they did not even plan on telling the people with reservations that they were closing. Those people are due to arrive here and think they have a room and all they will find is a closed hotel. Great Googamooga. I'll let you know how that progresses. It's not Cranfest's fault at all but we will bear the brunt of the blame for it from people during the festival. Just what we need.

Anyone got $42 million dollars? I know a great park with lots of potential you can buy.

Have a great day.
dea