KidMitts

Hey y’all, it’s been a while since I’ve posted! This blog isn’t meant to be a diary but more of a highlight reel, and boy do I have a good one.

Months and months ago I went on about how I wanted a soaker tub. Our tub was shallow and also had a leak in the overflow. This meant that if water hit the overflow it would proceed to drip down the wall in the basement. Occasionally I would forget about water displacement or God forbid, move around a bit in the tub and the next thing I’d hear is D yelling from the basement that I’ve overfilled the tub and it’s raining down there.  Not exactly relaxing!  Anyway, I convinced D I needed this tub. Being the loving spouse that he is, he conceded. Now I thought that we would just get a new tub, boy was I wrong!  We ended up planning a whole bathroom makeover. New floor, new vanity top, new wall colour, new fixtures-the works!  How exciting eh?!  I planned on doing the painting and figured D would take care of the construction parts. Things didn’t quite go as planned. In the midst of the planning and purchasing, I did a number on my right arm. Not only could I not lift anything at work, but I could barely grab a coffee mug out of the cupboard without wincing. So now D is left to do pretty much all the work.

Fast forward to “Reno Weekend” and I’m being pretty much useless except for handing D tools and sweeping up the dust. On Sunday he suggested I take the dog for a walk-AKA get out of my hair and find something you can actually do. I put this in here because if he hadn’t have suggested this, the following events would not have transpired.

Here’s where things get interesting. A series of bad decisions really. I got into the car with the dog. I forgot my phone but decided I could go for a bit without it. We drove to a country road where she could go for a run while I stayed toasty warm in the car. It’s all sounding good up until now. What I haven’t mentioned is the stupid idea that driving down a “no winter maintenance road” was in any way a smart idea. I started down this road and about 30 seconds in, realized that I shouldn’t be going down the road. But it was so icy that I didn’t think I’d be able to turn around. I think I also thought to myself “How bad could it really be?”  Readers, we have had more snow days than school days since January….it could and was really bad. So about a mile into this journey my car gets stuck. Like stuck stuck. Like, there ain’t no hope you’re getting this out without help stuck. But I’m freaking out and trying to get the car out on my own. I even pulled my car mats out of the backseat and tried to wedge them under the tires to get traction. I kicked and scraped at the snow and ice but in the end knew I was defeated.   Good thing I have my phone to call for help…oh wait, that’s right, I didn’t bring my phone!  I’m stuck on an abandoned road, with no phone, no one knows where I am, and need to walk atleast a mile to someone’s house to call D for help (who is knee deep in the reno and is really going to enjoy hearing from me). I had a lot to think about in that mile, like what D was going to say, and what I was going to say to the strangers when I knocked on their door. Sigh…it was a very long, brooding walk. It was also freezing cold and my nose and toes were going numb.

I get up to the main road with the dog and realize that I have a few houses to choose from. I decided on the big house with lots of farm equipment and the same last name on the mailbox as the nice people who live around the corner. Probably relatives and not psychos waiting to kill me. Yup, I had that thought too. I ask them to use their phone and explain my situation. The response was “Someone does this every year hun, I’ll get the tractor going and pull you out”. Relief! However, I still need to phone D and fess up to the err in my ways. His response was a snicker and “Why would you drive down that road!” And “I’ll be right there to get you”. The conversation went way better than I expected. I was thinking it was going to go more like a parent/kid scolding for some reason but really D was great about the whole thing and I deserved all the jabs and jokes I got from him…especially after what happened next.

D comes to get me and decides his big truck can pull me out. Which it does!  He gets my car pulled out and turned around and everything is looking great. The tractor is coming down the road but we could just say thank you and continued on home. But nope, D goes to get his truck turned around and buries it in the snow and ice. I’m sitting in my car watching his tires spin. He even tries to get me to pull him out but it’s no use. I’m starting to sink down in my seat and just want to bury my head in the snow as far down as his truck is. Good thing for the tractor that’s making it our way. After a struggle or two they finally pulled D’s truck out and we were good to go. But not before D thanked the man (who he knew) and gave one more little jab at me by laughing, rolling his eyes, shrugging and saying “city girls”. Totally deserved, yet I’m not from the city so I have no real excuse for this adventure.

Sounds like a happy ending to a crazy country song right?  Wrong. We make our way home and get inside. I go to take my boot off and realize something is horribly wrong. My big toe is angry. Like really really angry. I’ve broken my big toe. I can’t stand on it, wiggle it, touch it, it’s broken. When I was kicking at the snow around my tires I either hit the tire or some ice. With all the adrenaline pumping I didn’t feel it, and thank goodness for that because I had to walk that mile or kilometer or whatever it was.

I’d like to say I got to rest and reflect on the experience but D needed some help and I was eating so much crow that I wasn’t going to not help. The least I could do was suck it up right?  So with my broken toe and bum arm, I helped with a few necessary things. Gritting my teeth and bearing it.  And this is how I will always remember the bathroom reno.

I would like to add that we had a party to go to that night where I was the designated driver. I froze my toes off while driving in one shoe (couldn’t get the other one on!) and have learned my lesson!

It also took me a week to tell my mother this story because I didn’t want to get the mother talk from her. Once again, I was proven wrong by her reaction. She laughed hard and told me I had to tell my father the story because she couldn’t tell it as well as me. Goes to show that you never know what people are going to say or how they will react. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy.   My loving spouse was as always, my knight in shining armor and my mother saw the comedy in it.

Its been 1.5 weeks since the incident and while my toe is all shades of purple, it is healing nicely. And as for the reno, it’s nearing completion. Check out some of the pics on my Instagram page kidmitts.

Cheers!