Strike 1
I was watching "Bruce Almighty" on USA. Before I divulge the misery of my day, how can you not get sucked into Jim Carrey doing stuff like this? Then, there's his work in the movie "Liar Liar" which is totally funny.
Back to Bruce Almighty, eh, which was to be over by 3:30, which would be perfect, as I would then have enough time to get ready to leave by 4-ish and we would not be late for 5:15 Mass.
Unfortunately, I got the urge to have one of my wife's cookies that are in the big freezer in the garage. I went out to the garage, got the cookies and, noticing the garage door was open, I hit the button to close it.
Make sure, if you have a truck with a topper that the topper is closed when you close the garage door. Otherwise, it may catch on the garage door and bend the bracket.
Of all the stupid things to do. Strike one.
The topper now does not line up correctly and will have to be taken to the topper place in West Branch to have them look at it. There's a slight possibility that one of my brothers-in-law or my father-in-law will have the bright idea that fixes it when we are in Balltown over Christmas.
Strike 2
If I look back to how my day started, I could easily call a strike before 7 AM. I had made an appt with Dave @ Linder Tire to look at putting the spare tire winch that my father-in-law found on our van as well as to investigate the drops of oil on our garage floor that are coming from the van.
We did not take it over Friday night so it had to be taken over Saturday AM. I said that I would walk home - it's a 10 minute walk and I've done it before - but my wife insisted getting up and going with me. Strike two occurred not on the ride over or on the way back. It occurred when Dave called to say that they had put the new spare tire winch on the van. The drops of oil, though, were because of a casket leak and it was going to run $300 to fix it. Right there - strike 2.
However, Dave said, it was a 4 hour job and would have to be done during the week, not today. Still, a $300 car bill around the holidays is a strike. It's awful.
Later, I was assigned the job of taking the kids to the rec center so Karen could wrap presents and so we decided to pick up the van on the way over. When I went in to pay my labor bill for looking at it ($68), I asked Dave more about what needed to be done. It's not a big deal, I can still drive the van. I asked if it could be done after Christmas. Dave replied that he was going to be gone from Christmas to New Year's so we should try to do it after New Year's. So at least it seemed like a partial strike. Maybe a delayed strike as sooner or later, $300 will hit me.
Strike 3
It should have been a relaxing Saturday night 5:15 Mass in the sense that I would allow God to take away all my everyday worries and to just take an hour to relax in His grace. Playing drums for him normally calms me and puts a serenity over my body as I hit the beat and with Judy, the Music Minister, playing piano, we sound good. Keith plays bass and he locks in as well so as a trio, we're sounding pretty good after playing together pretty much weekly since September. Tonight, we get through all our songs and are about to begin the last song. I start playing 4/4 time but... the piece isn't written in 4/4. Judy looks over her shoulder with this puzzled look, like what are you doing? Then I recall, oh. This song is in 3/4. So I picked up on the correct meter and kept playing. In itself, it's not a big deal but tripled with the day that I had and the way things had gone for prior to arriving at Mass, it was the big climax of a day I can only see as negative.
But moving on...
The day turned out okay, I guess. We stopped at Hy-Vee, got a pizza - which was coming out of the oven when we walked in so I asked to have it boxed and I'd take it home. It was truly ideal timing. We watched "Back to the Future Part II" and the kids caught on to the space time continuum and how 1985 didn't look like 1985 that they left and blah blah blibby blah. I attempted to stay awake and work on a schedule for getting all my work done - 8 weeks and that doesn't include projects that haven't arrived in QA yet, including the rewrite of the systems project I've been talking about for months - but that bored me since I didn't have any paperwork to look at - just a daunting calendar and no clear idea when stuff has to be done.
So I fell asleep and my wife fell asleep and the kids took themselves up to bed and I was in bed before our Christmas lights timer turned off the lights for the night @ 10. Kind of a boring Saturday night to cap off an exciting Saturday day.
Now, I need to get showered and go to 11 AM Mass. I have a noon rehearsal with the orchestra that is playing Christmas Eve so I told Judy I might as well come and play @ 11 AM Mass. Going to an extra Mass seems like the right thing to do, especially today when I look back on how much worse my day could have gone.
I could have snapped the entire door off the topper.
I could have had a $300 bill yesterday.
I could have continued playing in 4/4 for the entire duration of the 3/4 song.
It may not seem like luck was on my side and that's fine. I have hope that God was and He helped me through some of it.
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