The best bad day I've had

Saturday was a bad day. Rather -- the things that happened Saturday could have made it a very bad day. But amid the swearing -- and long, long after it had subsided -- I was able to laugh over the whole thing ...

I was supposed to get up early on Saturday. I was meeting Brooke and Joy in Cheyenne, and Brooke and I were going to toodle around while Joy went to a baby shower. I had stayed up late the night before, doing laundry and scouring my apartment, because Brooke was staying Saturday night with me. This sets the stage for a bad beginning to Saturday.

I finally crashed around 4 a.m. after setting my alarm for 8 a.m. I was going to have a nice morning. I was going to ride my bike to a coffee shop. I was going to get to Cheyenne early, and I was supposed to meet Brooke and Joy at Target at noon.

I felt myself drifting awake -- that peaceful, gentle awakening that only means one thing: I had overslept.

I looked at the clock, which told me it was 1 p.m.

I won't print what I shrieked as I lept out of bed and tried to strangle my cell phone/alarm clock. It was only then that I noticed that I had turned off all the sounds on my phone. I smacked my forehead, V-8 style.

I called Brooke, who had been late getting to Target and was certain that I had just given up and left. I assured her that it was much worse -- I was still in Laramie, still in my pajamas ...

I eventually got to Cheyenne in time for the Brooke Exchange between Joy and me, and Brooke and I headed off to do our toodling. I'm familiar with most of the main roads in Cheyenne, but I'm also usually by myself and not chattering a mile a minute ... which is why I very quickly got lost (and apparrently made a left turn without the right-of-way, which almost resulted in an accident). We did make it to the mall and to Hobby Lobby (the lost part came while looking for Hobby Lobby), and by the time we had spent all our money there, it was time to meet Joy for dinner.

I thought we were west of town, so I started heading east on the Interstate, until I started seeing signs for Sidney (Nebraska), followed very shorty by Sierra Trading Post, the last "outpost" of Cheyenne before leaving civilization.

Enter the third or fourth V-8 smack on the forehead for the day.

We took the next exit and turned around as the sun was dipping below the horizon. There was a noise, as though a (large) rock had hit the car somewhere, but the windshield looked fine, and we didn't hear anything else ... for a couple minutes ... until a lublublublublub noise presented itself, and I finally had to pull over. Brooke got out of the car, followed by an "Oh, damn!"

Crap.

"You totally blew out your back tire," she said.

That got an "oh, damn" of my own.

I got out of the car to take a look.

"I don't know what to do," Brooke said. "We'd better call someone."

"I know what to do," I sighed, walking to get back in the car. We re-adjusted our position so that we couldn't get completely sideswiped by drivers who refused to switch lanes for us and so I could also have a tiny bit of level, paved space for the jack.

Brooke looked at me, slightly astonished. "You know how to change a tire?" she asked.

When I was 16, my dad had a prerequisite that I learn how to change my tire if I was going to get a driver's license. So I learned. It's come in handy more than once.

I set to work emptying the (vast) contents of my trunk so I could get the spare tire. For whatever reason, I have two jacks. Don't ask why.

I took a few seconds to stand behind my trunk and yell one good "DAMMIT!!!" before I got to work. I also yelled a choice epithet at a passing semi that came way to close to my car.

Now ... I know how to change a tire, but with the adrenaline of the moment, semis and cars flying by and making the car rock, the sun setting, and the frustration that NOT ONE SINGLE CAR pulled over to ask whether we needed help ... well, I got some steps turned around.

Did I mention that Brooke is five months pregnant? Yeah ... The pregnant lady and the ditzy brunette.

I jacked up the car ... only to realized I'd forgotten to loosen the nuts. So I lowered the car.

"You know," Brooke said, "since you know how to change your own tire, there's really no need for you to get married. You've got all your bases covered."

I loosened the nuts, jacked the car back up and took the tire off. I put the spare tire on, put the nuts back on and lowered the car again. The spare tire was pretty much flat, but it was in far better shape that what we'd just pulled off the car, so we went with it. We didn't have any other choice. There were some scraped knuckles and some other choice words.

We went to tighten the nuts ... only to realize that we'd put them on backwards. So I jacked the car up again.

We got the nuts put on the right way, lowered the car and tightened them. Brooke was trying to lift the old tire to put it in the trunk ... and then grunted.

"Don't lift anything!" I shouted. "I know how to change a tire; I do NOT know how to deliver a baby on the side of the interstate."

Just as we were getting back in the car, ready to pull back into traffic, someone finally pulled over to ask if we needed help. I waved a greasy black hand at him, thanked him for the offer and assured him that we'd gotten the tire changed.

The rest of the night in Cheyenne was really good. Big City Burrito, laughing, filling up the tires before we left town, and driving to Laramie at 60 mph, while semis and very impatient passenger vehicles passed us with great gestures of the hands and honkings of horns.

Later that night, after Brooke had gone to bed, leaving me a bag of starter mix for Amish Friendship Bread that had to be baked that night, I set to work baking bread. I never bake bread, so it was a risk -- a yummy, yummy risk.

After that, I decided to rescue my kitchen stool from the huge potted plant that has occupied it for a year and a half. I'd bought a new plant stand at Hobby Lobby that afternoon, so I set to work with that. Problem is ... the plant had grown tangled both with the kitchen stool and with two other plants.

The result was two pots crashing to my living room floor, a nice amount of potting soil laying on my carpet and an hour's worth of repotting to be done.

I finally gave up and settled on the sofa around 3 a.m. ... I finally drifted off to sleep, and the Best Bad Day I've Had in a while ended, giving way to coffee at Coal Creek ... coffee that was so good, Brooke called today to let me know what a letdown it was to have to go back to Starbuck's today.

I just need to learn how to caulk a bathtub and fix a leaky sink ...