It was just one of those days.....

Monday was just one of those days. You know, one of those days where anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. One of those days where you say, "can things actually get any worse?" And then you wish you'd never asked yourself that, because they invariably do get worse.

Monday morning I was in the mood to just stay home and clean and organize the house. That's what we spent most of Sunday doing, since we didn't have church (though with our branch president's permission we had our own sacrament meeting at home). Keep in mind, it was snowing all weekend, so I was not anxious to go out in that. Michael, however, apparently had a bad case of cabin fever, and insisted we would go out. Besides all that, an older lady in our church had called us asking if we could take her to run errands. I wasn't excited about that, as this lady is ALWAYS calling us and asking us for rides to places, to the point that we feel she takes advantage of us and never calls anyone else to ask for help. But of course we are too nice to say no. Michael being the kind and patient person he is told her we'd help.

We planned to buy tire chains for the car so it wouldn't be so hard to drive around. So we headed to our local Checker Auto Parts which is just a few blocks away. Unfortunately, they did not have any chains in the correct size for our tires, as I had feared. (Keep in mind that with the un-plowed, snowy roads and the time of year--just days before Christmas--there are LOTS of people buying tire chains.)

So, the next place we went to was Napa Auto Parts, which is about 4.5 miles away. This time we found the correct size, but learned they were over $80!! So we headed back towards our house to try Baxter Auto Parts, a store we'd never been to. However, on our way to Baxter, the strangest, scariest thing happened... Michael lost control of the car and it did a 180. He didn't slam on the brakes or accelerate too hard, because as a Wisconsin driver he knows better. However, there are these horrible big ruts in the snow where everyone has driven, and moving into and out of the ruts is very dangerous. So apparently he moved out of a rut just a little bit, and the whole back end of the car spun forward. It was terrifying to suddenly be facing oncoming traffic; however traffic was light enough that everyone just moved into the other lane. We were now stuck, however, so Michael tried to push us out while I pushed the gas. That didn't work, but some very nice guys came to push us out, and then I had to turn around the car and pull over (without getting stuck again) so Michael could get in.

Once again on our way to Baxter (with me driving and terrified), someone honked at us at a stoplight. So we rolled our window down and he says, "your tire is flat!!" Oh... great!! Luckily we were almost to the store so in the parking lot Michael told me he'd fix the tire while I went in to get the chains. To my pleasant surprise the chains were only $35. So I went back out and double checked with Michael, and then bought the chains. I get back out to the car to learn that Michael was unable to fix it because we accidentally left all the correct tools at home (we'd recently replaced tires on the Focus). So we had to drive home on a flat tire.

On our way home we saw some people whose car was stuck, so Michael thinks we should pull over to help. Not that I wasn't feeling charitable, but I figured if anyone needed help it was us and we should just get home. No, Michael really wanted to help these people. So we try backing up into this driveway.... and then we got stuck. So instead of helping those people get their car unstuck, they came and helped us get ours unstuck (pointing out, with horrified looks on their faces, the flat tire).

We finally made it back home (rolling through all the stop signs on the way so we wouldn't get stuck... and getting stuck at the one stoplight, making everyone behind us mad enough to pull around us illegally), and we got stuck just trying to pull into our own driveway. Pathetic. I went into the house to call the lady from our church and tell her we wouldn't be able to help her. Michael stayed outside and worked on the car. After a long time he finally was able to get a "new" tire on there (actually it was an old one from the Volvo that had recently been replaced because the treads were low). He then tried to put on the new tire chains, only to find that--though they were indeed the correct size for our tires, at least according to the box--they were far too big for our tires. I told him I thought we should just stay home the rest of the day, and though he wasn't excited about that, he reluctantly agreed.

Then to break the camel's back, Michael got some sort of nasty rash on his hand, whether from the cold or from the dish soap he used to help get the tire on, we don't know.

Talk about having a case of the Mondays...