Winning at Life

We have company this weekend.  We don’t usually ever have anyone stay at our house because:

A)  We live far away from town.

B)  Most of our family lives nearby and nobody needs to stay here.

C)  We don’t have a guest room.

David told me we would be having someone come and stay two nights a day before they were set to arrive.

Which is all fine and dandy, and I truly don’t mind.  However.  I need a lot of time to pull off getting my house ready for “guests.” Not 24 hours. Especially when I don’t have a guest room.  Did I mention the person coming is a bit of a clean freak?  Yes.  Wonderful.

So I go downstairs to look at my options:  the kids’ rooms.  The girls share a room.  The boys share a room.

I look at the boys room.  I have looked in this room before.  I have looked at it with tired, “I give up and don’t care anymore and this is just fine for now” eyes.  I have never look at it with “Oh!  Guests are coming!” eyes.

The horror.

The boys’ room will never, EVER, be suitable guests.  Ever.  For all eternity.

The girls, thankfully, have emerged from their “let’s save every single thing” phase and, in their room, I found hope.  And their room is now the guest room.

So, here I sit.  My house has never been so clean as it is today.  And it will probably stay clean for maybe 42 minutes.

Maybe.

But it is glorious and I feel on top of all the things.  We even cleaned out the boys’ toothpaste/toothbrush drawer! (shudder)

***

We have had a bit of bad luck with our vehicles as of late.  Over Labor Day Weekend, my Sequoia had a flat tire.  Which is no big deal.  Except to access the spare, you need to open the back of the Sequoia.  And fun fact:  the back of the Sequoia does not open.  Oh, there is a gaggle of things wrong with my Sequoia.  I suppose it is to be expected when you have 4 kids and drive at least 80 miles each day.  But, I digress.

David, along with his brother, Alex . . . .

Remember Alex?

They took apart the entire back of the car and fixed it!  And they also took care of the flat.  But the back of the car opens!  I was told it won’t last long, for reasons explained to me, yet not understood by me-but for now it is opening!  I feel like a pampered princess, driving around town, able to put groceries in the back and not under the kids’ feet.

The very next day, David’s truck broke down.  It cost $350 to tow it to the nearest town. We were anticipating the repair to be costly and decided we would have the mechanic take care of it if it was less than $5,000 (gasp!).  The mechanic called David and told him it would be only $1600 to fix.

Glory!

In the meantime, our washing machine broke down, and the fuel pump went out in our fancy, “back-opening” Sequoia.  Also:  the Sequoia needed 4 new tires for winter driving.  Because, why not?

I have been trying to talk David into getting me a newer car.  There are so many things wrong with mine, and it has over 200k miles on it.

Even though it is all fancy and opens in the back now, last week when I went through the car wash, one of my windshield wipers flew off during the “high powered drying” portion of the wash, and I have no idea where it went.

It just . . . flew off.

And I truly hope it didn’t hit the car behind me.

So, yeah.  I am dreaming of a fancy rig.

The mechanic took a bit of time to repair the truck.  A couple of weeks later he called David, and David gave him the credit card info over the phone.  After a bit, David asked what the final total was again.

The mechanic:  $10,600

Which is a bit more than $1600.

Apparently, David heard him wrong?  Or the mechanic said the wrong price?  Either way, our truck is fixed and we now owe $10,600.  And I am thinking I will need to wait on a newer car for me.

Which is a colossal bummer.

***

The school year is going well.  We had our Open House last week.

One family came through and left for a bit.  Then they came back, looking like something had been bothering them.

Dad:  We wanted to let you know that you forgot to put our son’s birthday on your birthday poster there.

I look at the poster.  It is festive and happy and I write all the kids’ birthdays on it.  I truly don’t know why I have it.  I don’t really use it.  It is just there.  And I realized that all the kids listed on the poster were my kids from last year’s class.  I had completely forgotten to change it.

#winning

Me:  Oh!  Well, hmmm.  I actually forgot to put everyone’s birthday up this year.  This is last year’s class.  I guess I forgot to take care of this!  I am sorry.

**awkward silence**

Grandma:  Well!  The custodian tells us you are a great teacher!

Me:  Oh, good!

Yes.  Taylor is winning at life.  She has a fancy car that opens in the back (minus one windshield wiper), a makeshift guest room (just don’t look too closely at the boys’ room), a squeaky clean toothpaste drawer, and she is on top of all the things in her teaching career.

Boom.

Happy Saturday!