The kids are watching Cars Three and I don’t even know how we justify THREE movies about cars that can talk and have feelings and relationships.  But then again, I think they’re sort of cute movies.  So.  You know.  Whatever.

(I’m so grateful that (for now) my two teenagers and one nearly teen will happily watch a cartoon with their younger siblings even though they also have of late embraced the world of Thor, which is unbelievable to me as well. Not so much the very fit immortal who comes to earth so much as the fact that my kids are old enough to watch those movies is what I actually find unbelievable.  Although his level of fitness strikes me as unbelievable but again, whatever.)

This weekend nothing that I planned went as I planned.

Which is probably evidence of someone’s plan that is not my own being enacted.

Saturday morning found my car’s battery dead.  It was raining of the torrential variety and my neighbor and I both felt inadequate to the task of jumping the car in the rain.  She loaned me her truck and kept half of the kids so that I could drive the other kids to their event in town.  That was super kind of her.  We picked up a friend of the kids and then, spontaneously, my friend Hilary and I both enjoyed a cup of tea at Tandem while we waited for our kids to finish their class.  After that we ended up taking the friend back to our house.  My dad called and said he was going to be popping through town that night so I figured he could help me jump the car in the morning and the rain seemed like a grand excuse to stay home anyway.

Hannah came over and she and I, both grown ups, agreed to play Otto in Monopoly.  (He’s eight, remember.)  And then, after like seventy-two thousand million hours, Otto beat both of us. We did not let him win.

 

 

I have a standing belief that I am incapable, unable, unwilling to cook dinner on Saturday nights. I cannot recall when this “tradition” began, but for some reason my meal-maker abilities run flat out by Saturday night.  I cannot do it.  Our dinners Saturday night are creative and on your own.  If you stop by Saturday night (unless you were specifically invited and I break my tradition on the occasion of your invited arrival) you will be finding something to eat out of the recesses of the fridge or the cabinets.  Cereal and a side of carrots, with six peanut butter crackers?  Yeah, sure.  There’s enough spaghetti for only two?  Best of luck to the first two who discover that.  The kids never complain and it seems to be a well accepted fact these days.

 

 

Dad arrived in the evening, with arm loads of things like glazed donuts and chocolate glazed donuts and peanut m&ms, plus milk and paper towels and half and half for the coffee someone will make him in the morning.

We didn’t bother to jump the car until the morning.

If my Saturday night dinners are lame, and they are, my Sunday morning brunches generally make up for them.  We love our Sunday morning brunches.  But they don’t happen at 8 am.  They’re BRUNCH, for the love.  And their goal, in their largess, is to keep me from making another substantial meal that day.  Also to sit still together and chat after the week before has ended and before the next week begins. Brunch’s official title is Sunday Morning Meeting.  (Sunday evenings are filled with church and grocery shopping, so the evening meal is a quick fix for all.)

Thankfully Dad brought the cheese and milk and extra butter and we served up some delicious grit bowls with sausage and eggs and biscuits and jam.  Thanks to Dad, we even had orange juice, a treat I often forget.  Also thanks to Dad we began Sunday Morning Meeting far earlier than any of ur internal clocks would have chosen.  But he’s Dad, so you go with the flow.

Finally we decided to jump the car before Dad hit the road north again.

It all seemed to work alright. Dad insisted that Bergen and I watch the jumping the battery process.  Which I did as I have watched so many mechanical feats my dad has forced upon me, with my face trying to pay attention and my mind knowing that I will almost always call for back up if this task is ever required of me.

Turns out, it wasn’t just the battery, it was the alternator too.  Which is kind of worse, you know.

 

 

An alternator that my dad drove to Auto Zone and found.  I’ve never purchased an alternator before.  It’s so small for so many dollars.  Actually, more accurately, I should say, I still have never purchased an alternator.  But I now can say I have watched someone else purchase an alternator.  (My dad is a hero.)

Divinely, and I do not use that word lightly, our good friend and talented mechanical guy Matt was able to be a hero as well and put in the new alternator.  On a Sunday afternoon.  What?  

So, yeah, it was a plan changer, the whole battery/alternator issue.  But it was also crazy amazing how tidily the problem was figured out and dealt with over the course of two days.  And our whole house just kind of rolled with it.  Shifted plans.  Said no to a couple of things.  Yes to a couple other things.  And all the while were cared for, fed and just absolutely fine.

Because sometimes life is like that.  Sometimes it doesn’t work out, and then it does.

 

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