Luke's terrible, horrible, no good , very bad day.

I just have to share and record the day Luke had two days ago. It was definatly post worthy.

Luke had one of those days. The poor guy just could not catch a break. Some of you may know already that Luke has some time off from work. (it's a long story, but fine because it's like a paid vacation) Anyways, so he's been spending a lot of time at home. He's picked up a second job just to keep himself busy. He's delivering lost bags for the airport. He did the same thing in Pittsburgh for a while. Anyways, it can keep him out pretty late at times, so he had gotten home around 3am that morning. The hard worker Luke he is he woke up quite early to go mow my sister's lawn. (their mower had broke) The day had gone fairly well to this point. He came home and decided he wasn't going to go back to to work until later that day so he thought he might be productive and change the oil in his commuter car. (I call it a commuter car because that's exactly what is has been for us. To put it in Utah terms it's really just a "pile of hud". Though it may not be the prettiest car it's been a fairly reliable. It's got us through over a year of a paper route, a 3 hour commute one way for a year, another bag delivery job, and has driven all over the East Coast. It's been good to us.) To get back to the story, while Luke was changing the oil he decided that he would go ahead and try to repair another problem. His AC hasn't worked for a year or so. Yes, no AC in the South can be miserable. While he was trying to pull the part out he accidentally punctured a hole in the radiator. Oooops. (On a side note Luke is still learning how to do car repairs at home. We are going through a self inflicted frugal stage in our lives. In our past life the car repairs were primarily done at Auto shops.) So, him puncturing a hole in a radiator was uncharted territory for Luke. So, Luke fumbles through it and figures out how to pull out the radiator to see if we could get away with plugging the hole. After a good look at it and some advice from a Auto shop he decided it would need to be replaced. Bummer. This frugal thing can be very frustrating at times. Especially when you try your hardest and yet are still forced to to folk out the doe. Luke was starting to get aggravated. Did I mention Luke's second job requires a vehicle?! Luke was in a big hurry to get things up and working as soon as possible. Well, he decides he's going to go ahead and replace the radiator on his own. Which will be his first time installing a radiator. He called around to junk yards trying to find a used radiator. He finds a salvage yard that says they have one 30 minutes away. Trying to kill two birds with one stone he takes the kids with him while I stay home and mow our HUGE lawn ( or should I says weeds that we mow down so they will look like grass). Luke takes off with the kids while I start start on the weeds, I mean the lawn. I'm only mowing maybe 20 minutes when the mower brakes. The clutch stops working. Darn, ohh well I guess I'll go inside to our air conditioned home and have some time to myself. I go inside and have a late lunch all by myself. I even get a little cat nap in. It was great. Meanwhile Luke arrives at the salvage yard and they have him wait over 45 minutes with all the kids only to tell him they actually didn't have the part. As you can imagine at this point Luke was starting to feel the pressure. He was supposed to be at work in an hour. His job entails a lot of driving, so our van due to gas prices is out of the question. He arrives home to see our riding lawn mower (which we had just purchased off Craigslist 2 weeks prior) broken and parked out on our lawn because his wife is too big of a wimp to push it in. He carries our sleeping kids in the house because I'm busy catching Z's. Luke check's out the mower to see that the clutch is indeed broken.(What a smart man I have. I've always said he has the mind of an engineer.) So, by the time he gets home he's late for work and has no way to even perform his job. The responsible man that Luke is, this drove him CRAZY. Too relieve some stress Luke decides to take a nice calming walk through our woods to clear his mind. When he returned I asked him if he was watching out for Poison Oak. He said no, but he thought he would be fine. I'm sure you can imagine what happens next. Yep, you guessed it, he now has Poison Oak all over his ankles and legs. Poor poor Luke. He really just couldn't catch a brake yesterday.

I know we all have days like this, or at least I know I do. When nothing seems to go right. What I'm grateful for is that there is always a tomorrow and tomorrows bring a fresh start.That night Luke was able to get a good night's sleep because he wasn't working his crazy hours from his second job. The next morning was Kar's first day of school. How fun it was to be able to see our little girl head off for her first day of school. Luke was able to fix the lawn mower with a used part, and found a new radiator for not much more then a used one. Everything always seems to work out for the best in the end, doesn't it?! It's just hard to see it when your in the thick of it. Bad days like those make me appreciate the good one's even more.

I'm just grateful to have a husband who does his best every day and works hard at everything he does. Thanks Luke. You're such a trooper. Don't worry I'm sure it's my turn next to have a terrrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. :)