Farming Flops and Car Bloopers

Here's the thing about farm life.  There's always something that needs to be fixed.  Or more like 20 somethings.  Unfinished projects abound and there's never enough time in the day to get to them all. 

I guess that over the years Paul and I have learned to roll with the punches.  I mean isn't it normal for your lawnmower to be held together with duct tape, and a mouse to build a nest in the door of one of your cars?  Or maybe it was because of that time we spent three months without running water (yes, I do need to blog about that at some point) - that definitely toughened us up.  Or perhaps we learned our survival skills from the process of building a house together.  We all know house building is just a recipe for mayhem.

One way or another, in 14+ years of marriage we don't flip over the little stuff so much anymore.  Because there is just so much little stuff that you'd drive yourself crazy if you worried about it all.

Like last week when I called Paul to tell him we didn't have water (and 5+ years later I'm still a little touchy over the no water situation, having slight PTSD over the 3 months of living without).  Paul calmly talked me through it.  I walked out into the bitter cold and hunted around.  Thanks to Paul, I found the source:

A busted pipe, one that we no longer use.  This used to bring water into the trailer, back in our single-wide days (yet another survival story).  It froze and busted, then ran until our well went dry.  I shut off the water system and my dear neighbor JP brought me enough jugs of water to get through the day until Paul came home with the part to fix it.

Well, I'd already forgotten the water situation the next day, when I went to meet Paul for lunch while my mom watched the boys.  We were driving by the mall, on our way to a restaurant, when we heard a CLUNK, ching ching.  Paul looked at me and said, "That didn't sound good".

I couldn't help myself.  I started laughing.  Paul started laughing too.  Maybe we're too immature to be grownups, I don't know.  Most people don't laugh when something falls off their car, but we've had plenty of experience driving vehicles that have seen better days. While we do the routine maintenance and upkeep, if we have extra money we tend to put it into the house or the land, not our cars.  And I have to confess that this isn't even the first time some random part has fallen off one of our cars.

Paul asked me to circle around through the mall to see what fell off.  So I did and we drove past the area again.  On his side, he saw a big spring, and on mine I saw a big bolt.

Paul decided he needed to go pick these items up.

So I circled around yet again, and pulled over to the side while Paul waited for traffic to die down.

Then he made a mad dash in the cold!

Across the road for the bolt, then back to our side for the spring.

There you have it: 

Paul thinks these go on the muffler, to hold it on.

Has he fixed it yet?

Nah.  But my muffler hasn't fallen off yet either.  If it does, I sure hope Paul's around to go scoop it up in traffic.

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