Continuing Education

So I guess since I managed to get my masters in plumbing I am now moving on to a bachelors in mechanics along with household electrics. By the end of this I should be a very well rounded, educated individual.

Notorious, massive west Texas storms blew through in the wake of the oncoming cold front. In only minutes our tiny town went from bone dry to rivers with currents strong enough to transport tricycles down driveway. Bolts of lightening making contact with ground sent everyone into motion as we began unplugging the house. Apparently we didn't quite do it all in time, as we would later figure out after 50,000 other things went wrong within only a matter of mere hours. Anyway, as any person does that only sees rain twice a year I promptly loaded everyone up in our 15 passenger van and took off down streets so filled with water they could quickly be classified as small lakes. With laughing, squealing children we drove through every deep puddle we could find as the contest was on to see how exactly muddy we could get our old faithful van. Whether this scenario had any effect on what would later transpire I have no clue and really don't want to find out...but we did manage to have a ton of fun while splashing through flat streets entirely underwater....for the most part. Since we were on our way to town anyway the timing worked out well, so after our mudsliding fun we eventually hit the real road to wind our way into town. And being in an area of Texas that is entirely prone to flashflooding the drive to town was just as awesome as the mudsliding fun we had done prior to taking off to run our errands. Sick husband was on shift so once again it was just the children and myself along with Mother following behind in her own truck. Errands eventually run we decided to celebrate life in general and eat out...with Rosa's being decided upon. We ate in relative peace....as only one can do with 8 excited children in tow and everyone and their dog stopping to talk and make conversation.....along with all of the employees stopping to come out and gawk. And though I do make fun of that aspect of it all I am forever grateful that we live in a part of the world that is receptive to our procreating ways and instead of the disdain that is so common in larger areas we are usually welcomed with open arms everywhere we go here. With lunch over we said our goodbyes with Mother so that we could attempt to part ways...which didn't really work out exactly like that by the end of it. Once more in our life old faithful didn't prove to be so faithful...and we sat staring blankly at our predicament. Children all car seated in I was feeling up for the task at hand. I bailed out and quickly went to work hooking jumper cables up after flagging a departing Mother back down and telling her to return to me. Feeling like quite the professional jumper starterer I had hoods up and everything connected in no time with Grayson by my side helping along the way. Red to red and black to black is entirely helpful when there's actually color on the batteries but, as it was, there appeared to be no color anywhere in sight so it became a guessing game. But when neither vehicle exploded I assumed I had guessed accurately. After sitting for a good 15 minutes while it "charged" I finally grew impatient and sent a text to sick and busy medic husband who had no knowledge of our current circumstance. "When jumpin off the van just how exactly long does it have to stay connected to the other car???" Phone rings less than 2 seconds later with exasperated husband asking why exactly we were jumping off the van. I stated the obvious..."Cause it won't start." After another half hour or so of going back and forth between irritated husband unable to come to our rescue and Mother's mechanically knowledgeable husband I was quite sure I had a beginner's degree in what takes place under the hood of any given vehicle...especially that of a diesel. Apparently vehicles have colanders or cellanoids or something to that effect that directly affect starters and have nothing to do with battery power and whether your vehicle is fully charged or not. And seeing as how our mammoth vehicle has to have TWO batteries to fire it off apparently there is one battery on top and another buried deep within the inner chambers of the beast...as in...if it was dead I could never in my lifetime get to it without crawling up under the van, finding the buried 2nd one, possibly hooking it up and then trying to see if that might be our problem. Umm....so that wasn't going to happen anytime in the near future that I could foresee so that option was out. After some 45 minutes of all of this and children growing rowdy and needing to pee after the 30,000 free cokes I had let them drink while eating lunch I was finally beginning to realize that this was not really a battery issue. Somewhere in the midst of all of this Gavin had been saying for minutes on end that he needed to pee. As life goes, 2 year old bladders only hold out for so long before they give....and it gave. With van charging, truck running, and trying to talk on the phone and relay info I then realized there was now a 2 year old who needed a completely new set of clothes...and a dry carseat to sit in. So it was that I began to strip him in the 30 below temps out in the Rosa's parking lot. Since our van is our home on wheels we have pretty much everything in it one could ever need. In fact, we pretty much have a mini closet and kitchen contained within. Instructions were given to fetch some new clothes from the clothes container and to play fruit basket turnover with carseats. Biggest 5 year old booted out of his, smaller 5 yr old moved over, 3 year old bumped up to smaller 5 year old's seat and now 2 year old in 3 year old's seat. Back to van issues...and instructions given to older ones to unload everybody and take them on a bathroom trip back within Rosa's...so we didn't have anymore urinary issues to deal with.

So it was that we narrowed it down to a colander or cellanoid or something issue. Somehow that little thing is important enough to be needed to engage the brand new starter we...well, not really we, more like van fixing husband....just installed in it. Once we all finally agreed the van would be going nowhere anytime in the near future and I was quite sure I had every part name of a 15 passenger van memorized we finally gave up. Unloaded old not-so-faithful of everything valuable, somehow managing to cram it all in a Dodge quad cab along with 8 children and 2 adults we came up with plan b. Dodge every cop on the way home and head that direction. With everyone in fits of laughter over the turn our day had taken poor sick husband was not quite feeling the humor in the deal and was, pretty actually, void of any humor at all.

No sooner had we pulled out onto the road than Mr Policeyman came turning our way. We quickly drop kicked about 15 kids into the floorboard of the truck and turned into the nearest parking lot we could find. Cause it's not exactly like you can call a taxi to take home in nowhere Texas. And we couldn't exactly leave 4 kids waiting while we legally toted 4 of them the 32 miles home and then returned to the other waiting 4 to legally transport them home. So it was that we played dodge ball with the cop in the parking lot and wove in and out of vehicles....as he seemed to have a love of following us. Eventually he turned into his choice of a space to grab what must've been lunch for him and we found our way back out to the road to continue to the station to drop come important crap off and then continue home.

We eventually arrived home. Doors were opened and little sardine children began to humorously fall out of every opening. Once home it took only a half hour to discover that in turning everything off for the storm we had not gotten to the oven in time and, for the 3rd time in 3 1/2 years, our oven has been fried by lightening. One can just imagine my sadness over this loss. But it's a 350.00 fix. We know this price well. In fact..so well, that we found it cheaper to go buy a dented store model rather than having our last one fixed yet again. As the night wore on we also found that our bathroom heater had blown up along with my toothbrush. Yep...my electric toothbrush. Who in the crap thinks to unplug a toothbrush??? Obviously...not me. So, I tried to fix the bathroom heater and take the computer board out of the oven to fix it all but....needless to say...those efforts didn't go so well either and it didn't take long to put them all right back together and just leave it all.


With no oven the game began to figure out how many things I could exactly microwave to concoct a decent meal and exactly how many canned good rejects one can actually make 8 kids eat. Yams? check. Green beans? check. Pineapple? check. Diced tomatoes with green chiles? check. Every nasty can of soup one bought 5 years ago that one could not bear to throw away cause someday you might need it? check. Black beans? check. So, you get the idea. I microwaved about 30 cans of odd and mismatched things and actually required the children to eat them. I just drowned the reject soup in crackers so they couldn't really taste it, mixed apples with the pineapples, forced them to eat the green beans to get full, and topped the yams with brown sugar. By the end of it I think they were all pretty sufficiently full. Anyone who wasn't was told they had to wait til breakfast for more food. In the meantime Mother came to discover that though the oven does not work the stove still does. Sooooo...I could've just scrambled eggs. Lovely. And then bedtime blissfully came.

To end this long winded post...the van sits in the Rosa's parking lot and probably will til Sunday since hard working husband has 2 trucks to do today, has a sales call to make and then is back on shift tomorrow. So..here I am stuck at home with a wind chill outside of merely 19, ice covering the ground, snow falling outside and so cold that I find it hard to get motivated to do much of anything at all. There's not really much of anything to do and nowhere we really can go. But Sunday we get to tow the van behind the truck 32 miles home so that should be enough entertainment to make up for the lack of it today.