well thank goodness that is over

It was a nice vist with my family. I'll write about the nice stuff later. First lets get the stress out.

Almost $1500 to fix my car, plus an hour spent just hanging around the lot of the repair place because even though they said "Yes it is ready" when we called, it was not actually ready. Fortunately the boys were napping in my folks car so we didn't have to keep them out of trouble. Car evenutally is actually ready, we pay the money & drive off. As the boys napped for an hour before we ever left town they naturally wanted out to run around about an hour into the trip & didn't fall asleep again until 10pm. So it was a long, slow, whiney drive that ended up being 90 minutes longer than it actually is. Then there was this point about 2 hours from home where we kept hearing a metalic rattle coming from the front of the car. It sounded like a loose chain occasionally banging against something. Naturally it is well dark and we are on a lonely stretch of road in WV, a good 45 minutes from someplace lighted to pull over & look. We wondered if it was the semi trailer in front of us, but we'd slow down so it would get some good distance & we'd still hear the chinking. This is stressing me out. what the hell is wrong with the car now? we finally reach a point where we can pass the semi & we don't hear the chinking anymore. It must have been some sound carrying, night middle of nowhere thing that was making us hear the clinking just as loud no pmatter how far the truck was away from us.

So we drive the last 2 hours, make the turn onto the road that leads to our road and run into a "ROAD CLOSED" sign. 7 miles from our house. I knew there was a sign at the other end of the road saying the same thing but I hadn't realized they were shutting the whole 10 mile road down. So I drive in a 20 mile circle to cross over the road 3 miles from where we had been. And I do that on faith alone that we are not going to encounter another ROAD CLOASED sign there. Fortunately we didnt because I would have gotten out & moved the damn sign gone across it anyway at that point.

There are 5 main ways to get to our road. 4 of them involve the driving on or crossing over the road that is closed. The 5th would force us to make a 35 mile circular detour from our original encounter with the sign, backtracking up 15 miles of road we had just driven. It would haveadded about 20 more miles to the drive from the road I was hoping to take. And midnight is just not the time to be meandering down twisty country lanes looking for roads you think you remember the names of. But we got home. And most wonderfully, as the cats are at a kennel, the house was not full of cat poop in every room. The boys went right back to sleep when we carried them to bed.

So far this morning I have washed 2 loads of laundry & dried one. Trimmed both boys' hair. Done a grocery list, cleaned out the fridge, stripped the beds and had some coffee. We have to pick the cats up at 1pm so we'll be leaving for the grocery store soon. Hopefully DS2 at least will nap in the car while we get the cats as that is a 40 minute drive home. we have a sitter coming at 6pm to watch the boys while I go to a MOPS committee meeting & DH goes to a Board of Supervisors meeting to request special permission for the company to put up towers (that'll be a wrangle). I should get home right at the boys bedtime & then I am going to be myself I have been completely drained by the last 5 days, even the good stuff was exhausting.