The Kind of Week it's Been

It's been an interesting week - a week of slight misfortune. I say "slight" because it's not like I've had to amputate limbs or anything. I've just had enough things go wrong this week  to constitute a theme.

For example, it's been the kind of week where I try to pepper my egg, and this happens:

You know that kind of week? 

On Tuesday, I woke my kids up early so we could go hiking. There was much resistance from the three girls. They whined and cried and told me how much the hate hiking and that they weren't going. In my most delightful mom voice, I repeated, "Everybody's going. We are leaving at 8:00, so be ready. Make sure you eat something!" I was met with many harumphs and excessive foot stomping, but I stayed cool as a cucumber. No yelling. No threats. 

I planned to go to Cecret Lake - which is a bit of a cursed trail for us. The first time we hiked it, we got stuck in a thunderstorm. The next time we hiked it, I was by myself with my four kids. There was no parking at the trail head, so we had to park at Alta and take an extended route. We never made it to the lake. When we turned back, Eva was asleep in the backpack, and I was carrying Zoe on my hip, who was also asleep. I honestly didn't know how I would make it back to the car (which was about three miles away). Another mom with kids saw me and begged me to let her drive me to my car. I was trying to be tough, but I knew I would never make it. We piled in the stranger's van at the trail head, and she took us back to Alta. 

This time, I really thought we were going to make it, but when we got to Alta, the road to the trail head was closed, and there was no way I was going to try hiking from Alta again alone with four kids.  

I turned around, and we went back down the canyon to Lisa Falls. I was really disappointed because I wanted a longer hike this week to keep us out of the house for a while. I had packed lunch and planned to use up at least half the day. But it wasn't to be. 

Before we arrived at Lisa Falls, my gas light came on (I'm not used to filling up the gas tank anymore - one of the side effects of quarantine). Then when we arrived at the parking area, I got out of the van and smelled my brakes burning. Oops. 

I decided to ignore it and do the hike, and then we could deal with car crises when we got back, if needed. 

Lisa Falls

Other than getting my shoes soaked in the river while keeping Eva from falling off a rock, the hike was fine. We got back to the van, and the van was fine. 

We tried going to the temple quarry on the way out of the canyon, but there was nowhere to park. This is my biggest anxiety about hiking and other mountain activities - the parking. 

We ended up going to a park for lunch where we were quickly bombarded with two buses of daycare children. 

That night, my kids and I had plans to draw a bunch of Sesame Street characters. We had these ones in the works when it started raining:

Side note: our driveway is really stained from the chalk and paint. We are now drawing on top of old stuff that hasn't washed off entirely. I'm not worried about it - I think it will all come off eventually, but some of it clings for a really long time. Particularly red and black. I go out and scrub my driveway once a week with a brush and Dawn dish soap, but it doesn't get it all off. 

Overnight, it poured, and in the morning, Elmo and Cookie Monster were just black outlines, and the Sesame Street sign had no lettering. It's always funny to see what sticks around and what washes away. When I drew Mike Wazowaski, it rained right after, and all that was left was his iris. In fact, it's still there, and it's been three weeks. 

But back to the adventures of this week. There are still tales of slight misfortune to tell. 

I've been very prone to tripping, spilling, and dropping things this week. If there's a cup of water on the counter, I'll bump it. If I'm trying to pour something, I'll spill it (especially if it's something like vegetable oil or the juice from a watermelon - my kitchen is currently very greasy and sticky). 

So I wasn't surprised at all when I went to put cookies in the oven last night, and two cookies fell off the sheet pan into the bottom of the oven. I knew I needed to get them out as soon as possible so my smoke alarms wouldn't go off as they burnt to a crisp, but that's difficult when the oven's hot! I used a pair of tongs to pull the bottom rack out of the oven so I could get to the cookies. Then I didn't know what to do with the hot oven rack. I couldn't put it on my floor or on the counter, so I just stood there holding it with tongs while I grabbed a second pair of tongs and tried to get the cookies. 

It was complicated and dangerous and required me to yell at my kids multiple times to get away from me so they wouldn't get burned. I got the cookies out and then I just stood there holding the oven rack until it cooled down enough that I could set it down. Since I'd pulled it out with tongs, I was kind of stuck. I couldn't get oven mitts at that point because I was immobile with one hand holding the rack with the tongs. I couldn't maneuver the tongs to put the rack back in the oven (I tried). 

Now I know I need to have a cookie removal protocol for the future. 

I urge you to come up with your own plan!

Just to make things even better, the cookies burned. Not horribly, but enough to be disappointing. I baked them on parchment paper instead of the silicone baking mats I normally bake them on. Did that make the difference or was it simply because this is a week of slight misfortune? Can I bake on parchment next week and have my cookies turn out just fine? 

The misfortune doesn't end there, though!

Now I will tell you the most unfortunate part of my week (so far... hopefully it doesn't get worse. It's only Friday morning, after all. There's still time...)

Yesterday morning our pipes started vibrating really bad. Any time we turned on any type of water in the house, it sounded like a freight train was passing through. Luckily, the kids and I were out of the house for most of the day because Scotty was on conference calls, and freight trains and conference calls aren't a good combo. 

In between conference calls, Scotty tried to figure out what was going on. After having no success, he had to cut into our brand new ceiling in the basement to access the pipes - the ceiling we just started painting two days ago. He spent two hours messing with pipes and trying to solve the problem. He was in the house and out of the house. He turned the water off and on and off and on. He ran every faucet in the house and flushed every toilet over and over, and he couldn't figure out what was causing the problem. 

Then he went outside and found that the backyard hose had been left on with the handheld sprayer in OFF position. 

Who did it?

Me. 

I planted strawberries yesterday morning, watered them, and then failed to turn the hose off. It was on all day.

And all it cost me was a hole in our brand new ceiling. 

Slight misfortune indeed.