It was supposed to be such a simple plan. We would leave super early for the mountain, slap on the rest of the upper roof decking, call knock it off by five o'clock, and be back home by seven. I was supposed to send texts all along the way home, and when we pulled up at the house, the gang would pop out on the porch, and yell happy birthday to our neighbor, who had no idea we were planning anything.
Part of that worked. Our neighbor was truly shocked that we organized a surprise party. That's about it. Eight o'clock this morning came and went, and I was still dressing while we waited for our neighbor. Turns out Barley started his morning ripping off his pinky claw, and had to be rushed to the vet. He was sedated for the claw removal, and we didn't get on the road until 10:30. Okay, fine, we could still work and do the rest, right?
We all only took one trip up the mountain (as opposed to me climbing once and the guys doing multiple shuttles with building supplies). We focused on the roof, but got lost on a few tangents along the way. I appointed myself time keeper, and I tried to keep us on the revised schedule. We were going along okay until we accepted in our hearts that the roof decking wasn't going to be finished before we left. So we unrolled the giant tarp I had spent 45 minutes de-roping, stretching, and folding. Seconds before we started tying it down, the wind started kicking up. It took twice as long to seal up the roof as it should have.
There is a spot on the rough trail across Forest Service land where we keep saying we need to move a couple giant rocks. Today, we drove right over them. We bounced our neighbor around in the back seat excessively. Seconds later, we heard a loud hissing noise. I thought he had pierced the radiator or something. Almost as bad--we pierced a tire. We rolled down to the neighbor's claim on a totally flat tire, where it was flat enough to change it out. The only jack in the truck was a piece of crap that Mr S-P had picked up in a junkyard when he got a replacement part for the 4Runner. It kept trying to seize and it barely worked well enough once to raise the truck. It wouldn't go back down and we had to back up the truck to get off of it. We lost over an hour to these delays. Thankfully we found a smooth route home to get home with the fewest possible stoplights.
We originally thought we would have all the friends decorate our neighbor's house, but I was the voice of reason and insisted we set up at our house, just in case the idea of having everyone at his place while he was gone freaked him out. It was the right call, especially after the dog drama of this morning.
Our party theme was a combination of Mario and "11x3." We had Mario party favors and three cakes with 11 candles each. There was a portrait backdrop with picture props. And of course we played everyone's favorite: Jackbox. We dragged my bedroom TV out to set up in the living room, rather than piling down into the basement. I may have lost Quiplash twice, but I am still the Trivia Murder Party champ!
No comments:
Post a Comment