Take yesterday, I planned to write up a great What I Ate Wednesday post complete with an easy slow cooker recipe and tips for incorporating more fruits and veggies in your diet.
I also planned to get a bunch of laundry folded and some work done on an article about cranberries.
Instead, I ended up doing none of this. All because of one little slip up at the gas station. After driving my mother-in-law to the hospital to visit my father-in-law who is recovering from a blood infection and to pick a prescription, I stopped to fill up on gas.
Blame it on pregnancy brain, blame it on being overtired worried about my father-in-law, blame it on just not paying attention, but I grabbed the wrong handle and filled my tank with ethanol.
And this is what happened….
Because you know, you’re not really supposed to put ethanol in just any old car.
Oops.
So much for my day of productive work. I was in Sun Prairie at my mother-in-law’s with no way of getting home in the foreseeable future.
I took a nap. I read some Shakespeare. We went out to lunch and then when we went out to her car, we managed to set the car alarm off.
Six times.
We were quite a sight to see. My mother-in-law was sure that the noise from the car alarm would hurt the baby so she kept shooing me away, but Manatee (who was on the phone) was trying to tell me how to fix the alarm by going under the hood.
After all of this, we decided to try to start the car one more time, by this time we had already made a complete spectacle of ourselves, and lo behold, God had his last laugh and let us go on our way.
Sadly, I have no recipes for you today. I am going to save them. I just have some advice:
1- Don’t put ethanol in your car.
2- Try to let yourself go with the flow.
Going with the flow is hard during the holiday season. There is so much to do and so many expectations. I had thought we would have our tree up and our holiday cards ordered by now. Given that we have spent all of our spare time at the hospital, I don’t see this happening any time soon.
Even if you don’t have a family crisis, there are other things that come up. It’s easy to get frustrated with yourself and your loved ones when things don’t go as planned. Let it go. As much as we want to think we are in control, we’re not.
As frustrating as yesterday was, I don’t think I have ever laughed that hard and I know that my mother-in-law and I will be sharing that story for years to come.
I also suspect that Manatee will always make sure I have gas in my car. At least something good is coming out of this…
