Keeping it real, yo.

since we've arrived home from a wonderful vacation this past Sunday, it has been one hurdle after another over here with appliances and machinery in our life.  Ya know those weeks?  When one thing breaks, they all seem to go?  It's be like that here.

First, after driving home with the kids in the truck from the pet store with some new fish tank rocks as our tank desperately needs cleaned; we made it all the way back to our road and the truck started acting funny.  It seemed like the gas wasn't working then the battery and engine lights came on and then that's it.  It was just done.  Thankfully for kind neighbors, the kids and I hitched a ride up the rest of the road and our quarter-mile driveway home while the truck sat vacant and depressed in a neighbor's driveway.

On Tuesday, we were able to at least get it up to our house and had a cousin take a look at only to discover we needed to fix our cigarette lighter fuse to run the diagnostic test on it.  After messing with it all evening, B forgot to take the key out of the ignition overnight and killed the battery.  So then we needed to get the battery charger from my dad-in-law and after an overnight charge; it fired up this morning as we were going to run it out to the shop to get fixed this morning.  That is until we put it in reverse and it shut down and wouldn't start up again.  So...yea, it's still sitting in the driveway d.e.a.d.

trying to jump the truck yesterday for a half hour with zero success.

but that's not all folks, oh no, that's not all.
Also, our cable box needs replaced; for unknown reasons over vacation it has lost the ability to use the Guide and On-Demand functions.
Our Central Air is out and after turning it on before leaving for our volleyball game this week, we came home to a 90+ degree house as the heat kicked on instead.
Our tractor isn't working right and the dandelions in our yard our knee-high by the fourth of July.
and,
B accidentally broke the garage door this week.

the moral of this story is to steer clear of us for a few days as we are having a very negative effect on machinery this week.
Also, does this mean Transformers are real and they don't like us?

So, yesterday, 27 weeks pregnant and nearly 90 degrees in our house with no vehicle to go to a pool, we watched a lot of tv and sat stationary for a long time.  I had this brilliant idea to set up an indoor tent for the kids and play camping with them.  Since we hadn't gone for groceries yet after coming home from vacation (!!) we were down to hot dogs and popcorn for lunch!  Moments later, popcorn was spilled and crunched into the living room floor and the kids decided they didn't like hot dogs that day.  So, yea.  it was time for quiet time.

And instead of cleaning up the popcorn, organizing the huge pile of toys the kids 'cleaned up' by putting them on top of the bench, or actually doing anything productive at all; I sat chugging water in front of an SVU marathon for an hour and a half.  Whatevs, man.  Just keeping it real.

And if I'm being totally honest, all this stuff is pretty freaking annoying and inconvenient, but it's not that big of a deal.  Vacation last week recharged my batteries, my mom surprised me yesterday by stopping by with chocolate and a foot scrub, we had dinner and the kids swam at Gigi&Pappy's last night, tomorrow is my favorite holiday of the year, and we have healthy, mostly happy kids.  I mean, what is there really to complain about?

I think weeks like this are put in place as a chance to take stock of the things you depend on (sometimes unnecessarily so, hello cable box), remind you to slow down and pay attention (hello, accidentally killing the truck battery), and mostly as a prime example that sometimes you just need to not be so hard on yourself and go with it.  The only way to dig out of these problems is by slowly enlisting help and getting them fixed one by one.  It just is what it is and being frustrated about it is a waste of energy.

Now excuse me while I welcome the AC guy to our house and ensure him that our wildly barking dogs are indeed upstairs and apologize repeatedly while Greyson asks him 3600 questions about what he's doing.  Meanwhile, I need to monitor Gemma while she uses an excessive amount of cleaning spray to 'clean' random surfaces all over the house.

It is far from rainbows and unicorns (far, FAR from it), but it's our chaotic, happy mess of a life.  And it suits us just fine, even when it's annoying like this week.