that day

two months ago, I wrote a small post about a morning trip to the dentist with my father. I left quite a bit out of the telling. I actually wrote that piece while sitting in the waiting room at the dentist’s office. The rest of the day went downhill from there. I’ll present it in bullet points.

The set-up:
- the driveway to the assisted living place is largely dirt, and there are very few places to actually park

-people coming by for just a moment are prone to blocking part of that driveway

-the dental appointment was during a relatively warm spell so the ground was muddy

The drama:
-when you don’t have a lot of confidence in yourself to back up through a maze of three cars on a dirt driveway into a relatively busy and curvy rural road, you are likely to make a three point turn

-making a three point turn on a muddy driveway is not a good idea

-getting stuck in the mud is not fun (especially when you do NOT want to let your father know you are still present on the grounds due to intense emotional rawness)

-waiting two hours for your son to come pick you up because your husband does not want to spend money on a tow truck is even less fun (especially when you missed breakfast, it is slightly past lunchtime, your stomach is growling, you have nothing to eat or drink in the car, and there is NOTHING within walking distance).

-when you have half an hour at home after your son picks you up but before your husband gets home to take you back out to try to free the car, your time would be better spent getting something to quell the growling gut than in posting a blog entry and feeding the children but forgetting about yourself.

-when your husband can’t get the car out after the first few tries, you would be better served aggressively suggesting the tow truck than meekly staying out of his way

-when, after several hours, the tow truck finally gets your car out (after a mere five minutes of effort), you may cry tears of stress and gratitude over your cold steering wheel for a few minutes before regaining the ability to drive

-when you get home at 10 PM, it would be a good idea to go straight to bed

-when the insurance check arrives a week later reimbursing the entire cost of towing, you may need to stifle the urge to hit someone with a cast-iron frying pan

Happily, the subsequent trips to the dentist were largely uneventful…