TheBanyanTree: Some days, it just ain't your day...

[Pam Lawley]

mystarz!!!!!!!!!  I have days just like this!  Misery DOES love company and
it's a nice change of pace to get to chuckle about yours!!!!  :D

Thanks for sharing your story!!

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 1:11 AM, Dale M. Parish <parishdm at att.net> wrote:

> It is aggrivating to have a whole Saturday in which you want to accomplish
> a very reasonable task list, and have each item on the list turn into a
> multi-major list of problems.  Sometimes, I wonder if maybe I'm being
> attacked by undercover senior moments, and may be my own worst enemy.  Ever
> have one of those days?
>
> I did manage to get the haircut first thing, but even that got
> complicated.  I'd intended to get up early and be at the barber shop at
> 0700, but when I got up to let Buck out about 0630, I found as I dressed
> that I'd left my truck keys in the downstairs bedroom in which my visiting
> stepdauthter was sleeping.  I've always given her privacy, so decided that
> I'd eat breakfast and read the paper and let her wake up, since she'd said
> she needed to be on the road to Huntsville by 0800 to shoot a wedding.  I
> shouldn't be too late, and I could wait with all the mommies and school
> kids that crowded the barbershop after eightish.
>
> There were eight pickups and two carryalls parked in front of the
> barbershop when I got there nearing 0830.  I noticed that the handicapped
> parking sign hadn't been put out, but someone in a jacked-up Jeep was
> backing out as I turned in, and I took his space besides the otherwise
> unmarked handicapped spot right in front of the door.  As I traversed that
> door, I saw why it was crowded.  In Mark's chair- nearest the door-- was
> the child's booster seat turned sideways with a hand-lettered sign that
> said, "Mark's sick today," and Mike, my preferred barber, was hard at work.
>  There was only one empty seat-- one of the school auditorium seats in the
> back, and I was glad I'd brought my iPad so I caould read the Kindle book
> I'd started last night.
>
> An hour and a half later, it was my turn.  One good thing-- I finished the
> book only a few minutes into the haircut of the last guy before me.  There
> had been a string of kids-- most old enough to behave.  The little ones are
> usually Mark's fare-- Mike is my age.  He and I usually talk about things
> no body else remembers, but Mark's a young barber with elementary school
> kids of his own, and he's better with the small children and Mike's only
> glad to let him, but today, Mike had to cut everybody who waited.  And a
> lot of them didn't.  Once they stuck their head in the door, they'd look up
> and down the seats against the wall opposite the three barber chairs and
> announce they'd come back next Saturday, or if they were retirees, next
> week.
>
> After finishing my haircut, I went back home to hook up the loboy and
> tried to get Buck to get into the truck.  It should have been a sign to me
> to just unhook the trailer and stay home when he refused to get into the
> truck.  We've been giving him one of the child's cones at Dairy Queen
> whenever we take him to town, and he usually is eater to go, but he must
> have seen how the day was going to turn out, and elected to go into the
> kennel instead.
>
> I normally stop at Crawdad's and get a cup of coffee to drink on the way
> into town-- it only adds a minute.  Most days.  When I got out of the
> truck, a friendly sort of fella moseys over to ask if I don't have a piece
> of wire in my truck that he can borrow.  I glance at his truck, and he
> sheepishly admits that their dog had stood on the electric door lock and
> locked his keys in his truck.  They were going to go pick up a car, and had
> stopped for a snack, and now they were stranded without an extra key.  He
> had a Louisiana tag, and I figured there was no use telling him that Texas
> state law forbade leaving keys in an unattended vehicle.  He had enough
> troubles.  There was a time when I kept a slim-jim in my truck for such
> occurrances, but in the last 20 years, the locking mechanisms have made it
> extra-difficult to pop a lock on the newer vehicles, and I didn't put it
> into this truck when I transferred all the truck junk from the old truck.
>  I looked, but couldn't find a coat hanger or anything that I could give
> him except the name and number of Gilbeaux's Wrecker, whom I knew would
> come out and open the truck.  For a price.  He thanked me, but didn't seem
> to want to make the call, and I left him, his girl friend and the dog to
> their fate.
>
> When I got to the shop, I found that both rear tires of the loader were
> low.  It took the little air copmressor nearly 20 minutes to get them
> pumped up.  Then, I saw that the old dead pine tree had fallen onto the
> pile of limestone that I was intending to borrow from, on the side of the
> bee hives.  I've learned that when I need to work the tractor around the
> bee hives, I need to wait until just before dark, when they're all settling
> in the hive, but I didn't have the luxury of waiting for dark, so I had to
> work the pile from the other side, and back the loboy in between the hives
> and the pile.  Wasn't too bad-- the bees didn't bother me, and the trailer
> was loaded with three loader buckets.  As I roaded the loader back to the
> shop, I noticed the pile of oak tree limbs that had been piled up on the
> middle of the sideroad since Hurricane Ike, and decided to pick them up and
> carry them on to the burn pile.
>
> I'd burned the pile a few months ago when the Burn Ban had been lifted.
>  Now, we've had unseasonable rains the last two weeks, and the ground's
> saturated.  I dumped the limbs, and was going to circle around the
> burn-hill and scatter the remenants from the last fire when the outside
> front wheel of the loader broke through.  Damn!!  Before I lost the
> backend, I stopped, turned around and tried to use the backhoe to pull the
> rig back, but soon had lost the backend, too.  The dozer was parked in the
> shop, but I only had my two quarter-inch chains I use to pull my Kubota
> with-- the good log chain was on the big trailer up at my brothers.  I
> couldn't get anyone on the phone there, so went into town to Tractor Supply
> the get a pair of new high-test chains, which I located, but when I went to
> pull them out of the shipping bucket, they were coated in oil, and they had
> one grab hook and one slip hook on each.  I found a single loose grab hook
> of the right size, but that was the last one in the bin.  They were
> short-handed and I had a 20 minute wait before I could get someone with
> gloves to move the hooks and verify that they were out of grab hooks.
>  While I was waiting in line to check out, Cindy called. She was out of
> school and I asked her if she could come over and run the dozer for me.
>  She wanted to stop and get out of her school clothes and into her rubber
> boots first.  I told her I'd see her at the shop.
>
> When I got back to the shop, I was going to crank the dozer and let it
> warm up while I changed one of the slip hooks out for the grab hook.  But
> the damned dozer wouldn't start.  Its been sitting there for two or three
> months and I remembered having to jump it once last summer, but the
> inactivity had let the batteries loose enough charge that it wouldn't crank.
>
> So I called Cindy back and told her that she didn't have to come-- the
> dozer wouldn't start, and that I'd just have to get the loader out the hard
> way.  She wasnted to know if I had supper plans-- her shorthand that she's
> hungry.  I told her I was going to eat a lot of mud until I got could teach
> the 580K to swim.  She asked me how I wasn going to do it, and I told her,
> with "sticks and stones."  Which I did, but didn't finish until nearly
> dark, just before JB's Barbecue, down at the highway, closed.  So I managed
> to bring home supper and the limestone that needs to go on the driveway,
> but it didn't get done today.
>
> Dang it.
>
> Hugs,
> Dale
> --
> Dale M. Parish
> 628 Parish RD
> Orange TX 77632
>
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