A Bit Thick

Remember my post about stuff- about the endless onslaught of stuff? Well, the current rough patch is getting a bit thick, as the British saying goes. I had hoped that the weekend kidney stone incidents were over. They were not. I hoped to submit my quarter grades this week. I didn't. I had hoped to reconnect with my dear husband a bit, but in 4 days he worked well over 40 hours. He missed dinner for three nights running and was late for the 4th work day. (Monday was Memorial Day.)

The biggie was that I got an e-mail from my mother informing me that my dad had another and longer "episode", was admitted to the hospital, and would be undergoing a bunch of tests. Then I got word that it was determined that he had a malfunctioning heart valve and required open heart surgery. I spent a couple days updating family members, checking my phone and e-mail messages, and figuring out how to make an emergency trip a couple of states away if the surgery was imminent. I was helpless hundreds of miles away and would only be a bother if I descended upon my parents house with my brood. We wouldn't all be able to fit into a hospital room at the same time anyway. Stress.

Then we got a piece of good news, the clutch replacement on the tractor was done, and the work came in a couple hundred dollars less than the sizable estimate. My husband stopped in and paid for it. He was promised that it would be delivered this week. 

Yesterday I got a call. They "had a bit of a mishap when loading" the tractor. The wiring harness "sorta melted." It's an old tractor, so the wiring wasn't great. Maybe they let it soak outside in the rain and then fired it up wet and that caused shorting problems. Maybe they hooked it up wrong when they put the two sides of the tractor back together. Who knows? They probably did something wrong, given the "mishap" comment and the fact that they are only charging us for the cost of the part. But we're kind of over the proverbial barrel. The tractor is stuck there and now we have to sink another $400 in an underpowered tractor that my husband was hoping to get something out of to put towards a bigger one. (He thinks that the flail mower is probably too heavy for the little tractor and exacerbated the clutch problem.) But without a clutch or a wiring harness it is worthless.

It continues to rain. I think we're hitting another rainfall record this spring. The local river is expected to exceed flood stage for probably the fourth time in a month. The fire bowl on my patio filled with rain water just overnight! The grass is high. The undergrowth along the wooded drive has been weighed down and is hanging in the path of vehicles, despite having been trimmed back once already this season. And the hay.... the poor hay. It is heavy with seed, past the prime time for cutting. It has been beaten down over and over again, and at some point will no longer stand back up. There is no haying window in the future weather report. And we are second on our cutting team's list this year. It's not looking good for our hay crop. 

My father's surgery is not scheduled until the end of June. That is worrisome, but meant that no short-notice trip was needed. My husband had a disappointing week at work and will be out of town testing all next week. I need to take care of a long list of mundane things like returning a rental violin and stacks of library books. I'm just hoping for a little more sleep and that I feel a little more in control this week. I KNOW that I'm not in control, God is, but I'd like my kids to see that mom is self-assured and not on edge. But like the pope just said, 

"When a Christian has no difficulties in life -- when everything is fine, everything is beautiful -- something is wrong." 

"You cannot remove the cross from the path of Jesus, it is always there." 

And that is a truth that resonates with me and my "always something" philosophy. So I embrace the cross. But like I said before, I sure hope that I have the stamina to make it through this rough patch called life.