Last night I said goodbye to the last team of the summer. Feeling exhausted, yet content, I drove home late with thoughts of vacation sugarplums already dancing in my head. I pulled up on the curb in front of my house, left the car idling and gracefully jumped out (I was wearing a dress) to unlock the sliding iron gate that borders our front yard. Our two dogs were whining happily in eager expectation of sniffing the tires of my jeep to see where I'd been. After I got them chained, I slid the gate open, only to have it get stuck a second later. I walked around the other side to figure out the problem. Our dogs were the problem. At the bottom of our iron gate, we have foot high panels of chicken wire held on by other wire to... why DO we have wire down there? Well, I didn't have time to contemplate the why. As of the last 5 months or so, our Dobermans have decided to dig a gigantic hole under this gigantic bush we have growing just inside the gate. Their belligerent digging has caused minor problems in the past with getting the gate open: huge rocks in the path or piles of dirt blocking the tracks the gate rides on. This time is was a bent-out-of-shape panel of chicken wire. For half an hour in very dim light, I tried pounding the darn thing back into place with a trowel we always have nearby to clear away other debris. It was too strong and I was too tired. I finally just lifted the gate off it's track and little by little moved it through the narrow opening. I rolled the car in, let the dogs off their chains, they sniffed the tires, I fell into bed.
So began my vacation week.
This morning I awoke (much earlier than I wanted to), had a leisurely morning starting a new book while drinking my first cup of vacation coffee. After a while I decided I needed to tackle the 'uh oh, the corrugated tube that drains the water from our washing machine to the great outdoors has holes in it and is now draining into our laundry room' problem. I took off the tube, looked at it, discovered the holes were made by voracious rats, and decided I could probably fix it with duct tape. Knowing we did not have duct tape, I nonetheless opened the 'kitchen drawer of randomness' in hopes God might have put some in there overnight. No such luck. However, I did spy a half-used tube of silicone that Amy and I had used to fix our front screen door a couple of months back. Desperation caused me to take out the knife. I shouldn't have done it. In the process of trying to pry open the top of the tube to perhaps get to some not-yet-dry plastic goo, I sliced open my left thumb. I quickly put it under running faucet water and cried. I knew I didn't have band-aids, so I wrapped it in paper towels, elevated my arm and thought about my mommy. Then I realized I had to get going to go meet my friend Daisy and go with her to the church's 'pulga' (yard sale) to buy clothes for the girls who live in El Callejon. So, I pulled myself together, grabbed my money, chained up the dogs and started to open the front gate. I then remembered I had not fixed the problem from the night before, I had just sort of worked around it. I studied the chicken wire praying it would miraculously disappear. It didn't. So, I decided to try what I did last night: lift up, push a little, let down. On the first go, one of the panels decided to come undone at one end. I undid the other end, ripped it off, pushed the gate open and then realized my thumb had opened up again and was bleeding all over the place. I think I said a bad word. I went back inside, got more paper towel, came back out, drove the car out onto the street, hopped out to close the gate and unchain the dogs. As I went to let Snickers off, he decided he might just want a bite of paper towel. I almost lost my thumb. I yelled at him, got in the car and took off.
In the ungodly heat of mid-morning, Daisy and I quickly went through the piles of kids clothes. "Erika. Noelia. Eh, Claudia, no, Kati, si, Kati." We held up clothes, trying to figure out who they'd fit. Fifteen minutes later I was back in my car and on my way into town to buy groceries and duct tape. The town was packed, there was no where to park, I may have said another bad word and then decided to go over to where my roommate is house sitting to see if they had any duct tape. After telling her my woes, I decided to go to the other market, park and walk around the corner to the one that sells the bread I like. It was sneaky, but I did it. Luckily the bread market didn't have the meat I wanted, so I actually did shop at the market I was parked in front of. I even bought a vacation bottle of grape soda. It would go great with the avocado, Camembert sandwich I was going to make on that yummy, crusty French bread I just bought. I started feeling better. When I got home, the gate slid open okay, Snickers didn't try to eat my hand and the pile of toothpicks that had gotten knocked over when I cut my thumb didn't bother me too much. I made my sandwich, popped in a dvd, and twisted the cap on my soda. Unbeknownst to me, it had rolled around a bit on the ride home and so proceeded to erupt all over my sandwich. They didn't go as well together as I originally thought.
I think I'm gonna go take a vacation nap.
