Just Call Me Murphy
The first few weeks months of school are a bit stressful for me. Having The Mister around has been a true Godsend. He has figured out dinner every night; he has taken over paying the bills and he has done everything conceivable to ease my load. While it has been truly wonderful to stay in the same classroom and teach the same grade this year, new curriculum in several content areas and adding graduate school classwork on top of my regular classroom responsibilities, I'm pretty useless at home. In a nutshell, my brain is complete mush.
Flash and I headed out the other morning with full intentions to drop him at his bus stop (now located nearly a mile from home) and for me to get to school even earlier than usual. I headed out to the car a few moments before he did, hit the button to raise the garage door and was greeted with a screech and a clang. The door had opened about six inches and stopped in a rather caty-whampus manner. I hit the button again, allowing it to go back down, and then hit it again to go up, while providing meager assistance in the lifting, thinking it was just chillier than normal and the door was being stubborn. No such luck. I set my keys, phone and iPad on top of the car and tried again with more effort on my part. No dice.
By this time, Flash had emerged and immediately realized the predicament. The stubborn garage door was not unusual for us; The Mister had temporarily fixed it several months ago, addressing this same issue. But now, just three hours after The Mister had successfully opened this same door and extracted his Jeep, we were stuck inside with a door that no longer seemed to be in the mood to cooperate.
Flash and I both tried several options. We tried the red handle to disconnect the opener and allow us manual operation of the door, but to no avail. So, we banged on this part, we shoved that part, we hoisted and pulled and pushed and negotiated, but it was clear, the door was not going up. While I texted The Mister, looking for suggestions, Flash, with some difficulty, disconnected the opener from the door, hopefully allowing us to get the door up.
Knowing our window of opportunity to get the car out might be extremely limited, I reminded Flash before we even began lifting the door, that if we got it up, he needed to KEEP IT UP until I got the car out. With greasy hands, high blood pressure, worries about being late to school and a staff meeting, we both hoisted the door with all our might and it went up. Flash vigilantly held the door while I ran to the car and backed it into the drive way. Within minutes we were on our way to school.
Heading straight to his school now, as the bus had long since gone, we were just turning the corner from our house when I heard something off the back of the car. Realizing something must have fallen off the vehicle, I stopped the car and Flash jumped out with his flashlight app and looked in the road behind us. Still black as night outside, he came back finding nothing. We sat for a moment on the deserted road, conducting a quick inventory of our belongings. Cell phone? Check. Obviously we have the keys. He clearly had his phone. No clue what it was. Maybe we had set the hammer or one of the pieces from the door on the car? No clue, but we weren't too concerned any more. I had just put the car back into drive when my mush-filled brain realized the catastrophe at hand. THE IPAD!! The school-issued iPad to be precise. Flash leapt out of the car and ran back looking frantically all over. With a car now approaching behind us, I put on my flashers, put the car in reverse and began slowly following Flash hoping to provide additional light to the problem at hand. Within mere seconds he bent over and picked up the aerodynamically-challenged iPad and ran back to the car.
"Please, please, PLEASE tell me it's not crushed!" I yelled. The case, a wimpy, cheap, not-impressive-at-all case, seemed completely intact. Flash opened up the cover while I held my breath awaiting cracked glass and professional humiliation as the "techie" teacher is the first to destroy her school iPad. There wasn't a thing wrong with it. Flash and I both exhaled a great proverbial-but-true sigh of relief and proceeded down the road to school.
Upon closer examination later, under sunlight and fluorescent lighting, there are a couple scratches on the corners of the cover that might allude to an altercation, but the iPad itself is in perfect working order.
My heart, however, is now about as useless as my brain after that near catastrophe.
Flash and I headed out the other morning with full intentions to drop him at his bus stop (now located nearly a mile from home) and for me to get to school even earlier than usual. I headed out to the car a few moments before he did, hit the button to raise the garage door and was greeted with a screech and a clang. The door had opened about six inches and stopped in a rather caty-whampus manner. I hit the button again, allowing it to go back down, and then hit it again to go up, while providing meager assistance in the lifting, thinking it was just chillier than normal and the door was being stubborn. No such luck. I set my keys, phone and iPad on top of the car and tried again with more effort on my part. No dice.
By this time, Flash had emerged and immediately realized the predicament. The stubborn garage door was not unusual for us; The Mister had temporarily fixed it several months ago, addressing this same issue. But now, just three hours after The Mister had successfully opened this same door and extracted his Jeep, we were stuck inside with a door that no longer seemed to be in the mood to cooperate.
Flash and I both tried several options. We tried the red handle to disconnect the opener and allow us manual operation of the door, but to no avail. So, we banged on this part, we shoved that part, we hoisted and pulled and pushed and negotiated, but it was clear, the door was not going up. While I texted The Mister, looking for suggestions, Flash, with some difficulty, disconnected the opener from the door, hopefully allowing us to get the door up.
Knowing our window of opportunity to get the car out might be extremely limited, I reminded Flash before we even began lifting the door, that if we got it up, he needed to KEEP IT UP until I got the car out. With greasy hands, high blood pressure, worries about being late to school and a staff meeting, we both hoisted the door with all our might and it went up. Flash vigilantly held the door while I ran to the car and backed it into the drive way. Within minutes we were on our way to school.
Heading straight to his school now, as the bus had long since gone, we were just turning the corner from our house when I heard something off the back of the car. Realizing something must have fallen off the vehicle, I stopped the car and Flash jumped out with his flashlight app and looked in the road behind us. Still black as night outside, he came back finding nothing. We sat for a moment on the deserted road, conducting a quick inventory of our belongings. Cell phone? Check. Obviously we have the keys. He clearly had his phone. No clue what it was. Maybe we had set the hammer or one of the pieces from the door on the car? No clue, but we weren't too concerned any more. I had just put the car back into drive when my mush-filled brain realized the catastrophe at hand. THE IPAD!! The school-issued iPad to be precise. Flash leapt out of the car and ran back looking frantically all over. With a car now approaching behind us, I put on my flashers, put the car in reverse and began slowly following Flash hoping to provide additional light to the problem at hand. Within mere seconds he bent over and picked up the aerodynamically-challenged iPad and ran back to the car.
"Please, please, PLEASE tell me it's not crushed!" I yelled. The case, a wimpy, cheap, not-impressive-at-all case, seemed completely intact. Flash opened up the cover while I held my breath awaiting cracked glass and professional humiliation as the "techie" teacher is the first to destroy her school iPad. There wasn't a thing wrong with it. Flash and I both exhaled a great proverbial-but-true sigh of relief and proceeded down the road to school.
Upon closer examination later, under sunlight and fluorescent lighting, there are a couple scratches on the corners of the cover that might allude to an altercation, but the iPad itself is in perfect working order.
My heart, however, is now about as useless as my brain after that near catastrophe.
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