A Day of Unfortunate Events

Oh man, today was just a day of poor decisions. Not that the decisions were poor in and of themselves. No, they just had unfortunate outcomes that continued to occur throughout the entire day.

The day started out just fine. My Dad was finally off work while I was home for the weekend. I woke up and worked on school while my Mom and him played a stackable scrabble game they recently found. We enjoyed an amazing breakfast of berries from our garden and had a jolly time while I helped my Mom crush him in the game.  

Our plans for the day were completely open. My Dad and I wanted to take Pongo for a hike, but it had been raining for days so we knew the woods would be a muddy mess. I also wanted to see my Grandma, so we decided to kill two birds with one stone and walk to her house. It was about an hour and a half walk on the train tracks. We contemplated different plans, whether to walk home or find a ride, finally settling on my mom driving to a dog park and meeting us on the train tracks. My Dad repeated the directions to her several times (take the train tracks until the fork, then go right) before we all headed out. About 15 minutes out, we came upon bush after bush of blackberries. I was overjoyed, blackberries are only my all-time favoritest berries ever. We paused for a while, filling our Ziploc bags with all we could fit. Pongo was ever so patient with us, pausing every few feet and waiting for us to continue. 

I ate most of my bag as we walked the tracks, sometimes balancing atop the tracks, sometimes crisscross running like crick rats, and other times just walking normal. My only bone to pick with train tracks is that the planks are too close to comfortably walk on, but too far to skip one. At least for my legs. It’s either run and skip, balance, or walk uncomfortably. Yet, I suck it up because I still love walking along them. However, after 30 minutes I began to regret my shoe choice. I was wearing my Keens, which, in my defense, are the best shoes I brought from Moscow. Anyway, my one toe on my right foot was killing me and continued to do so the entire walk. That was poor decision #1.

About halfway there, we get a call from my Mom, saying that she had reached the factories. Factories that are on the wrong tracks. Remember how my Dad said go right at the fork? Yeah, no, she was supposed to turn left. This was #2. Now, my Dad and I had to fight through some nasty weeds and sliding dirt slopes to reach the upper train tracks. We backtracked until were reunited with her. Now going in the correct direction, we continued to my Grandmas. I started falling behind because my foot was making it hard to walk on the rocks. We reached a point where we were close enough to the creek to go down a hill and continue in the same direction on a path. Shaded and flat, sounds much better right? Nope. #3. Not far on path and we found ourselves in a swamp. The entire trail was complete mush. My keens let all the mud and goop in, causing me to slip inside my shoes. Some areas were way above our ankles, and I half expected a frog, snake, or loch ness monster to emerge. We actually did see a snake along the way, but he didn’t care for us. 

When we finally reached the car, we were all dripping head to knees in sweat, and knees to feet in mire. We drove a minute down the road to my Grandmas, where we put our shoes out in the sun (#4) and drank large glasses of water. We cooled down while my Grandma went to evening mass, then my Grandma decided she wanted to eat out for dinner. That was all fine and dandy, expect it had rained while she was at church. Our shoes were long gone. No shoes, no service. Well, we had to take Pongo home anyway, so we could just get dry ones there. We ran through the rain to the car, then came #5, my Dad had left the sunroof cracked open to let the heat out, while it rained and poured. Yep. So, our shoes were soaked and so was the car. At this point, we were all laughing (a little manically) because it seemed like we just couldn’t catch a break. 

Well, the day of unfortunate events ended just fine. We went to a local diner and ate lots of yummy food, dropped my Grandma off at home, then finally took showers. It was a long and weird day, but hey, I ate about two and a half bags of blackberries and still have some leftover. That’s enough for me to categorize this day as perfectly perfect. 

Oh, an additional thing that happened throughout the day - my parents car decided it doesn't like to start anymore. So every time we had to drive, we had to jump start the car. In the rain and all. I guess that's #6 now?