On Fathers Day and blessings in disguise...

Did you ever have one of THOSE weeks?

How about one of those MONTHS?

You know which ones I mean: those days, weeks, months where everything just goes kaflooey all at the same time.

In the last few weeks, Ollie has had emergency surgery on his hand from a splinter (of all things) that got jammed into his palm pretty good at work.

Subsequently we are in worker's comp paperwork hell.

And my car is in desperate need of new tires.

Ollie's truck is on its last legs and every time he takes it out on the road we say a little prayer that he makes it back home again.

I was sick with that crazy morphing cold thing that everyone seemed to have.

And then last night Ollie and I went to the big city of Brunswick, which is a half hour or so south of here.

The power was out at the house and I was jonesin' for some Gelato Fiasco.

Rumor had it there was Pecan Sticky Bun in the case last night, which turned out to be false, which was A-okay with me because come on, it's the Gelato Fiasco and you can't go wrong.

After gelato we went to Wal-Mart to get Ollie some cheap shorts for work (he's a hard-wrokin' carpenter, hence the nasty splinters...) and all of a sudden, the car started making a very un-friendly grinding noise.

Ollie hopped out in the Wal-Mart parking lot and diagnosed the issue as worn-down brake pads.

To which I replied: "My car has those?"

Ollie said that it was not safe to drive home for fear of breaking the roter.

(I guess my car has a couple of those, too.)

Anyhow, we called AAA and it was going to cost $90 (at least) to tow the car home, and we just couldn't stomach that.

So as a wicked awesome present to my Dad on the eve of Father's Day we called him at 10:30 at night and said "Happy Father's Day! Come pick us up!"

And Dad, being the good Dad that he is, said "Sure, where are you?"

And we told him we were in the Wal-Mart parking lot.

Dad started laughing.

"What? What's so funny?" I asked.

"God is punishing you for going to Wal-Mart," he said.

And the whole thing was so funny that all of a sudden I couldn't help but laugh at myself.

The point I am trying to make here is that all of our kaflooey happenings of the past month are really quite trivial in the grand scheme of things, and THANK GOODNESS for hindsight, because I can truly say that I am glad *most* of them happened.

Because of the splinter in Ollie's hand, we got to spend hours in the waiting room together, talking, playing rock/ paper/ scissors, stitching up LOTS of hexagons, reading and just plain old being together.

I realized that there are not many people with whom it is a pleasure to spend time in an ER waiting room, but if I happen to be married to one of them (and he's cute to boot), then I must have done something right along the way...

Plus it was funny when he came out of the anesthesia and was kind of "loopy."

And yes, we are in worker's comp paperwork hell, but I did get to spend the whole week after the surgery with Ollie at home for my days off, which is quite rare indeed: normally he has weekends off and I have Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, so when we get time off together it is a bit of a treat.

Certainly worth a bit of paperwork, I'd say.

My car still needs new tires but that means I don't drive around as much as I normally would so I'm saving a bit of money on gas.

(Can you tell I'm still trying hard to see the bright side of that situation?)

Ollie's truck is on its last legs, but it has been a great truck in the meantime and we got our money's worth out of that thing several years ago, so any extra time is just a bonus.

My crazy morphing cold was not very serious and was probably just my body telling me to take a break for a while and chill the heck out: always good advice.

And although my car broke down, it meant that I got to spend a half an hour riding home in the backseat of my Dad's van with Reuben in my lap, listening to Ollie and Dad pontificate on the many different ways you can love a canoe for the entire ride, and I realized that they are not just my husband and my father, but they are genuinely friends with each other and that makes me disgustingly happy.

Plus Dad's line about "God punishing me for going to Wal-Mart" was priceless.

So...

Happy Father's Day to all the many different types of fathers out there: your little ones are never too old to call in the middle of the night for a bail-out.

And maybe it won't seem like a fun phone call to get at first, but at the very least it might remind you how very much you are loved and needed... even when your daughter is 32 and thinks she's got these things covered.

(Consider yourselves warned...)

XO,

Rhea