Just one of *those* WEEKENDS

Ugh. I feel like I shouldn't even post this blog. My life has sucked these last few days and I don't even like admitting that because I always try to stay on the positive side and remember that there are SO many people who have it worse than I do right now. But it started with Thursday (see my post about my lunch!!) and I feel like it has gotten worse and worse through the whole weekend. Probably until right now. It's almost 5:00 on Sunday and today has proven that I can have a normal day again. I slept in until 9:15 and my sister-in-law showed up at our house with a Dunkin' iced coffee, and my Mother-in-law made us breakfast. I felt like I'd hit the lottery after the last 36 hours of my life. We went to Church and it was unusually crowded because it is Palm Sunday. I felt renewed and refreshed after Mass, and the day has been pretty low key since. So now I can blog about the sucky few days we just had.

Friday at work was pretty busy. It would have been my Mom's 75th birthday and I was feeling a bit melancholy, but all in all the workday went pretty well. Hubby called and asked if I could pick up something he left on a job that was near my work. Coming out of the side street, I hit the curb with my back passenger side tire and heard the "bang" as I came down off the curb...I knew that wasn't a good sound, but the car (which is 3 months old) wasn't riding any differently so I got on the highway. About 5 miles into my trip, a light came on on the dashboard that I wasn't familiar with. As I leaned over to get the manual out of the glove box, (I was in traffic going slowly), a nice man flagged me down and pointed to my back tire....I rolled down the window and he shouted "Your back tire is completely flat!". Oy. I pulled over to the breakdown lane and got out...sure enough it was dead. I called AAA and after describing exactly where I was on the highway, they told me to wait 15 minutes - someone was on their way. 15 minutes...20 minutes...30 minutes...a return call from AAA saying "They can't locate you". Are you freakin' kidding me?!? I described EXACTLY where I was, exit number and all. I drive a CHERRY APPLE RED car. How in the world can they not locate me? Well, they dispatched a different tow company and told me to wait another 30 minutes. I actually said to the dispatch guy "ANOTHER 30 minutes?!?!" He apologized but they are not even in the same state as I am so there is nothing they can do. Ugh. So, exactly 30 minutes later the tow company shows up and in 3 MINUTES has my tire changed. The guy was very nice, but at this point I had to pee so badly that I just wanted to get going. I stopped at the tire store and he told me the tire was not repairable, and to replace the spare will cost $209.00. Wow. Expensive curb.

After arriving home and settling myself in for the night, my Father-in-law comes upstairs to tell me that our dog is not doing well. I may not have blogged here about our dog...he is only 4 years old but was diagnosed in November with inoperative, incurable cancer. After getting a second and third opinion, we were told there was nothing they could do for him. Poor Rusty. Poor us. It's been awful to watch the tumor in his leg get bigger and bigger and watch him slowly deteriorate. But, he has been doing pretty well considering and was still playful and happy most days. He's been on pain medicine pretty regularly since January, but these last few days he has been declining more rapidly. On Friday night we had made the decision that if he was still this bad on Saturday morning, we would "put him down". All of us were crying, and it was gut-wrenching. Pal had a really difficult time with it. But after having a good night on Friday, and a good day on Saturday, we have decided to hold off for right now. He is sitting here with us right now and other than hobbling on 3 legs he seems content.

Another piece of news we received on Friday is that my Father-in-law's leukemia might be returning...he's been going through testing and they don't like the look of his blood test results. He will now have to have a bone-marrow test again, which is very painful for him. We are anxiously awaiting more information.

So, Saturday started out to look like a normal day especially with the decision to wait on putting the dog down...but silly me, I spoke too soon. We had plans to visit our newlywed friends at their new place, and they were making dinner for us. Just as we were about to leave the house, my Father-in-law asks Hubby to come down and plunge their clogged toilet...which turns out to be a more complicated problem of water backing up into their shower stall. So, Pal and I leave without him to go to our friends under the assumption that Hubby will solve the plumbing issue and then join us there. 5 hours later, I come home to all the outdoor lights blazing and 2 septic trucks in our driveway. Not a good sign. It turns out there was a blockage in our septic system somewhere IN the house. It took them 4 hours to get it resolved, and $550.00 later we were unclogged. It smelled lovely in the house, too. It was 11:00 at night and Hubby had never eaten dinner.

Do you see why I am feeling a little on the negative side? Like I said, I am not even sure I should blog this because I know there are so many people who have much bigger problems than we do. But it felt good to put it on paper (so to speak) and vent it to the blogger world. Thanks for letting me.

On to Monday!

-G