A weekend ending in tears

On Thursday, Robb was out of town and Leon and I did a garbage run over my lunch.  He didn't wear shoes all day...  AND he wasn't planning on getting out of my minivan.

Until after the dump, we stopped for lunch and parked at a hotel to eat our lunch.  I happened to check my email and found that someone on Freecycle was offering an exercise gym machine!!!  It had been available for almost 20 minutes and since we were still in town, we drove over to see if it was still there.

SCORE!!!!

I already have a BoFlex in my garage under a bunch of stuff, but Meri had said she'd like one in her garage.  I'm sure SOMEONE would make room for it!  No weights with it, but that's ok.  We'll pick some up.

Without tools, it wouldn't fit in my minivan, so we drove back to town with the hatch up and it sticking out just a tetch.  Meri was warned ahead of time to get her garage open and it was.  So I backed up to it.

that was a mistake...

CRUNCH!!!

I backed the hatch door into her garage and crumpled it.  I was stunned. Her garage was fine.

Meri kept asking me "What were you thinking?!" I think 3 times...

Um, obviously that it would fit!!! duh!

When I got back in the car, Leon pointed at the side mirror and asked me, "Were you looking through THOSE mirrors when you backed up?  Because things are closer than they appear."

LOL!!!  He cracked me up with his seriousness!  What a sweetheart!

BUT in all seriousness...  it doesn't close now.

I straightened up the garage enough to back it in and there it sits.

My 3 week old minivan (well, it's a 2010...) without even the plates yet on it.

Robb thinks we can pound it enough to get it to latch.  I'm skeptical.

We're pricing out powder blue liftgates online.

YUCK.

And Robb will contact our car guy this week and see if he even wants to touch this.

YUCK.

So the exercise machine wasn't ALL that free...  Robb pointed that out.

On a slightly happier "spending money" moment...  A friend of mine was selling her late mother's sewing machine and sent me a message.  She's the one who gave me all of her mom's fabric stash a few weeks ago.  And since her husband is a car dealer, she knows how to sell...  

"Take it for a spin! and then make me an offer."

Okey dokey!

I got it all threaded and plugged in and all it would do is sew backwards.

Have I been sewing wrong ALL these years??

(That was actually a thought of mine for a split second.)

(these new fangled machines...)

I dug in the instruction manual and found how to turn off the reverse but then it just sewed in place and balled up under the fabric. SHOOT.

I pulled it all apart and gave it a good cleaning with q-tips and tweezers.  There were plenty of dust bunnies and lint tucked in under the feed dogs.

Adjusted the tensions and it sews like a dream now!

Whew!

After googling and asking my ASG friends how much I should offer, I came up with an amount and she accepted. DONE.  It's mine.

Oh!  I got the button-holer all figured out on my Janome and got Meri's button holes into the blouse.  I forgot to take it along with me to this morning's workout for her to try on... SHOOT.

On the 4th of July, we had Leon's brother, Finn, here with us.  But they were being brothers...  so the fireworks in our backyard was cancelled.  

There was flack.

"But TODAY is the 4th of July, NOT tomorrow!!!!"

Um... neighbors have been shooting them off all week, tomorrow night will be fine.

And it was.

Early in the evening last night, Leon and I did some smoke bombs.  

What a deal!  A whole $.85 for a few seconds of purple smoke under my tire!

Although $.59 was totally worth it for a few seconds of a puppy pooping!

The one that shot out a parashoot was a winner also.  Afterwards, it made lots of additional jumps into the living room, off the deck, across the room.  And had lots of things tied/taped to it already.

 When it got dark, Robb and I were already in the middle of watching Eurovision so Ryan and Leon went outside and did the alien firework as well as a few others that require darkness to appreciate.  I'd have liked to have seen how the alien one did, but just heard the "pop pop pop" sounds.

Oh well.  With any luck, our town will do fireworks NEXT year.

AND last but definitely not least, today my mom is celebrating her second birthday in heaven.

I miss her.