A Monday Kind of Post

I had a bad day yesterday. At least, it wasn’t my bad day at all and I feel bad for feeling bad if you see what I mean. Of course you don’t, I haven’t told you anything yet!

First, a jar fell out of a cupboard, hit a dish – dish was ok, jar was ok – bounced onto the counter and onto the floor – jar was still ok. Contents intact.

Phone wasn’t. I had left it on the counter.

 I am convinced there is a malevolent phone genie operating within our family. 4 of us are currently awaiting an expensive phone repair and my husband has had to replace his a month ago after dropping his old one on our newly-laid floorboards!

You can’t see all the damage, it’s cracked all down the black screen, too. Virgin quoted us £404 ie the cost of a new phone! Apple said £109 and in both cases I would be without my phone for up to 10 days. We found a local company that will come to my home and repair it there and then, for £84. An expensive accident.

But worse, much worse, I had some bad news about the health of a loyal, lifelong friend and I can’t stop thinking about it and him. It knocked me sideways. Of course, I told myself at regular intervals, you can’t make this about you. He’s the one dealing with it, and dealing with it very positively. I sent a hopefully positive and supportive response to his email. But my head is full of this news and I don’t know to deal with it. I didn’t sleep last night. I kept thinking of all our exploits when we were young. His songwriting friendship with my brother after I left to go to uni, his ongoing support after my brother’s fatal accident. How he always makes me laugh.

Today all I could do was sit and eat! I tried distracting myself with a very bad comedy film but it wasn’t as diverting as the fridge! Let’s just say the almost full peanut butter jar is no longer almost full.

Then my ever-weather-optimistic husband began hanging out all the white bedding despite the black clouds and the rain warnings on the weather app.

This happened:

Now, a very long time ago he bought one of those washing lines that you pull out from the wall and fasten to a tree or something and then it recoils when you no longer need it. Of course it’s still in a cupboard while the existing washing line was tied together having broken once already. It was bound to happen. And it chose today.

So, this afternoon, I had words with myself and decided to watch La Vuelta, the pro-cycling Tour of Spain. I am leading our family Velogames Fantasy League, having chosen the winners of the first two stages. My son is not a good loser and is not taking it well that I tweet about my wins each day and I looked forward to extending my lead.

Within minutes, I lost a rider! He didn’t even crash – an acceptable reason for abandoning the race – no, he has sinusitis. Now, he arrived with sinusitis, a very painful, debilitating condition. No-one is going to get through an uphill 3 week race in the upper 30’s with sinusitis! Why would they start him and why couldn’t they have told me before I chose him?!

I looked up out of the window and saw this:

I burst out laughing. My husband had been awol all day, I presumed mending bikes in the shed, he hadn’t mentioned anything about chopping down ash trees. I’d assumed he was just giving me some quiet time.

Anyone who knows us knows that the only tools my husband is safe to be left alone with are bike tools. If he so much as looks at a drill, we all run for the hills. He is accident-prone, falls off ladders, bikes, has flooded the kitchen trying to decorate behind a radiator, so no way would I have let him near a saw unsupervised haha.

But yesterday, I had remarked that I could see an ash sampling sticking up well above the height of the shed and growing behind it in a very inaccessible position. I said we needed to ask someone to get it down, we couldn’t allow it to get any more established.

Today, he was beaming from ear to ear, brandishing the saw in one hand, the 20′ tree in the other. I couldn’t believe it. And no injuries or damage to property.  He’s even more pleased with himself because he’s going to chop it up and dry it off to add to the woodpile.

Even better, he finally solved a problem with his bike that has been taxing him for several months – I’ve had to listen to endless descriptions of the problem and to no end of YouTube videos purporting to show him how to resolve it and his frustration when they didn’t. He’d stripped it down and replaced lots of bits. In the end, as often in such cases, all it took was a £3.50 part!

Now I just need Sky to get the win on Stage 3.

Copyright: Chris McGowan