I had somewhat of a frustrating, aggravating day today. The good parts of my day was the time spent with the horses. They were all in wonderful moods and put a smile on my face. The irritating parts of my day involved all of the other stuff involved in running a retirement farm. The stuff that isn’t as fun as playing with the horses.
First I went ten rounds with my laptop as I wrestled with QuickBooks Pro while I was eating lunch. I was trying to generate a custom report and was driving myself insane modifying, changing filters, etc. I could. not. produce the report I wanted. After refraining myself from beating my computer to smithereens while in a frustrated frenzy, trying the help feature, searching the help section of the Intuit website and generally living the definition of insanity (you know, trying to do the same thing over and over again with different results), I called Intuit and payed the forty nine bucks to have them tell me exactly what buttons to click. They did, I got my report (and I was oh so close to puzzling it out on my own as it turned out) and the world was beautiful again.
I made a quick run to the feed store which is conveniently located about 7 miles away and was back out with the horses for the rest of the day. I was winding things down at about 5:30, had fed everyone dinner, the stalled horses were turned out and stalls cleaned, troughs and buckets washed and filled and everything ready for tomorrow. The only thing left to do was to unload the truck from my earlier trip to the feed store.
I had parked the truck over by the house as I had also stopped at the local produce stand and bought a few veggies, had my mail on the front seat and stuff like that. So I go get the truck and begin the simple task of backing it up and driving the very short distance to the barn. The truck is long and I had parked in the spot closest to the house since the other spot was occupied. I guess I didn’t leave enough room between cars because I had to put the two back tires in the grass to avoid side swiping the Tahoe while backing up and turning around.
Except when I went to go forward again I was stuck. No problem, that is why we have four wheel drive, right? So I put it in 4WD and still no forward movement. I think about this for a second and decide that probably I just need to back up a little farther and give the tires a chance to get some traction and a little forward movement going before the little bump up onto the asphalt. By the way, there is pretty good slope right behind our driveway that gets steeper the farther back you go.
So I back up farther and have the truck all the way off the driveway, have it in 4WD and still the stupid thing isn’t moving forward. But every time I ease off the clutch I do go backwards a little bit. I’m really trying not to just pop off the clutch and gun the truck and tear up the grass. We’ve had a good bit of rain in the last couple of weeks even though the last few days have been dry. After a minute I realize I have crept closer and closer to the fence and gotten myself onto an even steeper incline than where I started. Great.
Jason and Bear in front of the truck. The best part is we just traded trucks and have only had this one for four weeks. Yet another reason why I wasn’t anxious to seek help and listen to the rhetoric. Bear is licking Jason’s chin in the picture.
I sit there for a minute pondering my options. Jason is out of town. Maybe I should call Jason and seek counsel from him. Definitely not a good idea!
I can call my dad and ask him to help me. A worse idea! If I knew how to code the html to have about 20 slash marks through that along with a few big, black x’s I would have done so.
These options are absolutely unacceptable. I will be six feet under pushing up flowers and Jason and my Dad will be saying “remember that time she got the truck stuck in your back yard?” Because as much as I love both of them there is still a bit of chauvenism left on this farm. If one of them had gotten the truck stuck they would be commiserating, “yeah, you know it can get really slick in that shady area, plus that incline, and there just isn’t enough room to turn that truck around on this driveway.” However, the only reason this would happen to me would be because I’m a girl.
I did a quick Google search to remind myself who sang this song. You remember this song:
I continue to ponder my options. Call a friend to get some assistance. I’m not going to ask someone to drive over here for this. Take my mom up on her offer of a dinner I don’t have to prepare and ponder other options for a while. DING DING DING, we have a winner!!
I leave the truck and drive the trusty Kubota(TM) to my parents’ house and am eating some yummy, homemade vegetable soup when my mom mentions that dad is leaving for a meeting. I perk up at this immediately. Dad breezes through the kitchen, asks me how my day was, (I answered with the generic “fine”) and leaves. As I hear his car backing out of the garage I explain my dilemma to my mother.
Mom: “Do you want to wait for dad to come home and maybe he can help?”
Me: “Ummmm, absolutely not.”
Mom: “Are you just going to wait until tomorrow?”
Me: “No, why don’t you help me. I’ll get the logging chain, you drive dad’s truck and pull me out.”
Mom: With a somewhat horrified look “uh, well, um, ok”
To give my poor mom some time to get in her comfort zone with this we drive the trusty Kubota(TM) back to my house and assess the situation. I finally decide that I will unload the thousand pounds of feed and the dozen bags of shavings to get the weight out of the back. So mom and I (all 5’3″ of her!) unload the feed into the back of the trusy Kubota(TM) and leave the bagged shavings on the ground for the next run with the trusty Kubota. Bless my mom, she never was completely into this whole idea of the farm and moving into the country. I guess all these years later, especially in these moments, she is reminded of those doubts!
Bear in the trusty Kubota top and Jason with the trusty Kubota below
Next I decide that I will get some of the scrap lumber left over from fence repairs and place some behind each of the tires. I get this done and decide to try one more time to gently drive forward. Again I’m trying to ease off the clutch and ease onto the gas pedal. My mom helpfully points out that I’ve rolled slightly backwards onto the boards. Well that’s great mom, but I’m in FIRST GEAR, not reverse!
I try one more time and just let off the clutch and give a little gas, and triumphantly drive slowly up the incline and back onto the driveway. As my mom prepared to leave she smiled and said “I won’t tell anybody.” I was going to just let it be our little secret, but now that I’ve rectified the situation I can actually see the humor in it.
Plus, it is 9/11 and I had been thinking about that today, remembering where I was when I heard about the attacks. As I looked back on my day and the fact that my worst problem was my new truck stuck in my back yard my problems were pretty surmountable. I’m not mourning the loss of a loved one today. Life could be so much worse. So with a little bit more of a spring in my step I commenced unloading the feed from the trusty Kubota(TM), went back to pick up the shavings I couldn’t fit on the first load and called it a day. Finally.
Me in the entry way of my parents’ house a few months before I sold Questar. I’m sure my former clients would be impressed to know that I now spend my time in dirty blue jeans driving a utility vehicle with a logging chain in the back for emergencies!
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