Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper

That Kind of Week

When I was a young girl and my dad didn’t like what we were doing he would say, “I’d rather slam my hand in a car door.” I think that happened this week. As we’ve all been awaiting the 2020 election results I feel like I kept slamming my hand in a car door.

It began when the heating element in our hot water heater went out. In our attempts to repair it ourselves, we had to mobilize some of our paint and stain we keep in our store room so we would have room to work. After completing the project that consumed an entire day (because we found 6 inches of mineral deposit in the bottom of the tank) it was time to clean up our mess.

As I was carrying an old gallon of stain (which never stuck well to the deck, but stuck to the can on top of it), it proceeded to drop square on the top of my foot. It took everything I had in me to not share some choice words in front of all four of my cowpokes. I squeezed back the tears and simply tried to remember to keep breathing. The bruise appeared immediately and reminded me of the sign “stupid should hurt.” I felt like it was a scene out of the movie Home Alone, except I had done it to myself.

In an attempt to keep the little humans alive and make a plan for our evening meal, I stumbled upon a freezer trying to freeze itself to death. It had built four inches of ice on it and I had to chisel out supper from the avalanche of frost. The same day the vacuum just fell over dead. No good-bye. No warning. Just gone. Forever.

The next day showed little improvement as I was quickly changing over laundry and found a diaper that had not survived the washing machine. I really don’t know what they put in those things, but it was all over the clothes and the machine. The stuff inside diapers just seem to grow when super-hydrated. It took nearly 15 minutes to get the disaster zone recovered. We will be changing over to cloth diapers…

As I mobilized my efforts to a different area of the house I decided it was time to complete the mission of washing dishes. I loaded what I could into the machine from heaven, known as the dishwasher, and when I thought the murky water was cleared from all impending monsters I turned on the garbage disposal. I was mistaken and instead had left a spoon to be eaten by the blades of death. Neither the spoon nor the disposal won the battle and it woke up the baby from his nap.

I feel like my week has been so symbolic of the chaos that has been going on around the world and specifically in the United States. I never know from which direction the house chores are going to attack me next, but I feel underprepared and yet ready for the battle. Isn’t that 2020 in a nutshell?

 

Reader Comments(0)