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Bad Day Picture of Emily taken in 2001. It's the saddest picture I could find. I had a horrible, rotten, no good, very bad day. It started being a horrible, rotten, no good, very bad day before I even woke up. Well, I was awake, I just didn't want to be awake. Emily had a fever. She hardly slept at all. Hence, Mommy and Daddy hardly slept at all. When morning finally did arrive the new dog decided it was time to pee on the carpet. The Frosted Flakes were soggy. The handle on the new coffee maker broke. We were behind schedule when Valerie took Sarah to school and I stayed with Emily. Sarah forgot her backpack so it took two trips. Sarah also "forgets" to wear her retainer. It hardly fits any more. More braces and a new retainer will be expensive. I've always been more of a dog person than a cat person. Valerie prefers cats over "smelly dogs". The new farm cat has decided that he likes me best while the new dog has decided he likes Valerie best and is afraid of me. The dog paced and whined and barked the entire time Valerie was gone. When Valerie finally returned it took all my will power to get to work out in the field. I was still stiff and sore from previous days, I had a sunburn on my back where I hadn't been able to reach with the lotion, my boots hadn't managed to dry out over night, and I had several hundred pounds of fertilizer that needed to be applied by hand because I decided to not buy the $2000 fertilizer spreader for the tractor. Caring for the coffee trees is a lot of work. I haven't even started on the Macadamia Nut trees yet. It's time to mow again, the electric fence needs some maintenance, the tool shed is leaking, several trees in the front orchard need to be staked up, the plants along the driveway need to be trimmed, the list never ends. At noon, I quit for lunch. After several glasses of water and a few minutes of rest I heated up a frozen burrito. While eating, the phone rang. It was the insurance company, they had decided that they couldn't provide me with homeowner's insurance because our home is on a farm. Duh, we're farmers! Apparently they require that homes on farms also have farm insurance but they don't carry farm insurance. The mail arrived. SBC Global hadn't managed to cancel the DSL service for the previous house when they canceled the regular phone service. Now they want me to pay $49.95 for a month's worth of DSL service that was impossible to use because there was no phone line connected. After lunch I had to fix the turn signal on the station wagon. Hawaii has very lax vehicle safety requirements, just about the only thing they check is turn signals. Of course the only thing broken on the station wagon is the stupid turn signal. It's not just a simple bulb, it's the flasher unit which requires a long neck and double jointed arm in order to reach. Valerie sent me to pick up Sarah after school. I also needed to "swing by" the grocery store to pick up some food and medicine for Emily. Hawaii has no freeways, there is only one main road that wraps around the entire island. Traffic on Hawaii's one main road can give LA traffic a run for it's money. Sarah's school is to the south while the grocery store is way north. I didn't have a Safeway Card so it cost $80 for milk and wateri. Ok, I got a little more than milk and water, but not much. Milk here can be $7 per gallon and a box of cereal costs $5. That's not good for a family that drinks lots of milk and eats lots of cereal. Even worse is when Safeway charges an extra $30 for buying stuff "on sale" without a Safeway Card. I discovered later that the cashier lady charged me for three things of water when I had only bought two and she didn't credit me for the "Free Sierra Mist" coupon I gave her. I spent another $50 on gas (nearly $3 per gallon here) and another $50 on pet supplies at Wal-Mart for the new dog and rabbit. Then it was time for another hour in traffic trying to get back home. Going by the DMV to get new license plates can wait for another day. When making dinner, Valerie discovered that we are nearly out of propane and the water filters need to be changed again. Living in the city it's easy to take the convenience of public utilities for granted. I had also forgotten to get a new part for the screen door and I cut my finger when bending the old part back into shape. By the time I sat down for the evening all the good TV shows were long over. Now that it's daylight savings time on the mainland, prime time is three hours early here. Valerie had recorded CSI for me but accidentally deleted it after she watched it. I decided to read a little before going to bed. I have a good book to read but I decided to read through my tax paperwork first. Now that I'm a self-employed farmer I have to file taxes twice a year, even if my income is $0. The good news is that reading the tax rules helped me fall right to sleep. |
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