A Week From Hell!

Last week was most certainly one of the worst weeks I have endured in absolutely ages and ages! Trust me when I tell you, I definitely don't want another one like it!

It was, of course, Labor Day weekend and with that came the local traditional Labor Day Picnic that has been observed for over 140 years now. It is sponsored by St. Severin's Catholic Church out in the little village of Drifting and is a great way to spend some time eating burgers or hot dogs, funnel cakes or you can also partake of a great full dinner in the church's dining hall too.

When I was growing up, until I was probably about 18 or 19, I went to this event faithfully with one of my uncles. He had grown up here in Grassflat back in the early 1900s and because he went to work when he was 10-12 years old working for his Dad, who owned the meat market here in this village, he drove the meat wagon around town, peddling the fresh meats daily to the various ethnic groups in Grassflat. That consisted primarily then of dealing with a whole lot of women who spoke either Swedish or Slovak and since his family was Swedish and spoke that language at home, he had to pick up various words or sentences then in Slovak so as to be able to communicate with the part of town that was primarily Slovak.

As a result of that, he got to know just about every family in the village and in his later years, he reveled in going to the Cooper Grove for this picnic because it afforded him a change to reunite with many of the old friends he had made way back when.

For a number of years I sort of drifted away from going to the picnic but over the past 10-15 years -as my own age seemed to increase by leaps and bounds (not just 1 year at a time or so it seemed) I began to attend the picnic again as I could fully understand then why my uncle had enjoyed it so much.

I love having the opportunity to see and visit, if only briefly, to say Hello, to folks back home for the weekend along with people who have stayed in this area most of their lives. Remembering many of the goofy things we had done as children or teens and now, as senior citizens, it really is a fun time to be able to do that!

This year, I did something at the picnic that in all my years, I hsd never done before!

I had dinner at the church hall this year and chose to dine on their barbequed chicken. It was the tastiest bbq chicken dinner I think I've ever had!

What's more, I got to sit and partake of the meal with my former sister-in-law and her current husband as well as one of her younger sisters and her son too! Always enjoyable to see them as the ex-sister-in-law lives about 120 miles away from here and her younger sister was up here from Florida so I rarely get a chance to enjoy a nice visit with them!

Their Mom and her husband had also come up for a week or so from Florida so I got to see her too and she's a friend from my really early years -one I grew up next door to -so something I definitely had looked forward to seeig her again too.

All had seemed to be going quite well until Grammy (as my kids refer to their cousin's grandmother) told us that as she and her husband were driving to the Cooper Grove, they encountered an accident that had happened. A local resident was out riding a motorcycle and had wrecked on one of the back  roads here.

The news of who was involved in the accident -the son-in-law of my neighbors about 4 doors down from my place and the fact that he had been life-flighted over to Altoona Hospital with severe head injuries started what now seems to me to have been the chain of events that made last week so bad!'

Two days later -on Wednesday -sadly he succumbed from his injuries. His wife -now his widow -is one of the best known individuals around this entire area as she is the Manager of the local Moose Club and as such, is known for all her hard work in bringing the Moose here pretty much back to life. That and the fact that she is cute as a button, has a great personality too -very friendly and though her husband was a bit on the quiet, low-keyed side, he too was very well known and liked as well.

The morning of his death, I had issues of my own to contend with though.

I woke up about 6:30 a.m. and had to get up to make a bathroom visit you see, and somehow or other, I still don't know exactly how I managed to do this, but as I went to sit down on the commode, I somehow lost my balance and fell backwards, smacking my back against the tank of the commode.

The commode tank didn't care much for my intrusion there and as a result -to show how upset it was over that, the tank split into several pieces! This in turn caused the water in the tank to flow -all over my bathroom floor!

Initially, I couldn't locate the water shutoff for the commode but when I did find it, it was very upsetting to realize I couldn;t get the valve to turn to shut the water off! So, as I was trying to figure out perhaps some other way to shut the flowing water off, I decided to meddle with the ball and chain contraption that works to make the commode flush and in the process of doing that, I knocked the cap off the thing that holds the chain which in turn then sent more water spewing out like a geyser as it shot out and up, hitting the ceiling!

Eventually, I did get the shutoff valve to work and was able to cut off the water supply and get the floor mopped up! But after that was all said and done, I then had to spend the bulk of the day trying to locate a commode to replace the broke one and get one at an affordable price too!

Lucky for me that my daughter, Mandy, is pretty savvy about places where one can locate all kinds of used items that are in very good condition and she told me to go to Bellefonte to the ReStore Store there and see if I could find something I could afford. Which is what I did and I came home then with a lovely pale shade that looks sort of like a cross between a very light mint green and an even lighter aqua kind of color too! I called my older daughter to let her and her fiance know I had secured a commode and they said they would be up that evening then to get it installed for me!

Although Wednesday didn't exactly begin nice and with the news that the guy who wrecked his motorcycle had passed away on top of my bathroom issues, I think the way things ended with my issues it could then be said "All's well that end's well" because the fact I only had to spend $35 for this beautiful commode and that it was one also made by Koehler products which caused my daughter;s fiance to tell me that I had purchased the "Cadillac of Commodes' by buying this item -well at least things on that level were looking up.

Two days later though, on Friday, things went to pot all over again and my trusty -until then -older computer decided it was not going to cooperate and perform anything whatsoever for me! Yeah, it crashed big time and that, because I absolutely HAVE to have a computer, caused me to make a ru to Walmart then where I purchased this lovely-and smaller in physical size than my previous unit had been but this puppy, it turns out, is bigger in the amount of spaceit has available to work with and also, much, much faster responding that the sick computer had been too!

The computer problems are still plaguing me though as I'm fighting with something or other every day niow it seems to get the new computer completely set up and running exactly the way I want it to operate! Getting my e-mail program to work right is my current  computer related nemesis!

Saturday was the day for the funeral from our church and the women of the church served dinner to family and friends of Tony Moore then. So I had to fix a big  (about 4 or 5 quart-sized container) casserole of mac'n'cheese to take out to church for the dinner and I ended up making most of the preparations for that around 1 to 2 a.m. in order to have it ready to be baked early Saturday morning!

So there now that three things -accident and a funeral, broken toilet and blown computer with something difficult to deal with happening like every other day!'

And wait now -there's a little bit more to the debacle that last week ended up being!

Sunday, I got word that my older daughter,who was out in the woods with her fiance and his brother, had an accident! Seems she lost her footing and fell and broke at least 2 bones then in her ankle!

That accident is going to keep her pretty well incapacitated now through at least, Christmas! She will be having surgery on the ankle to put pins and whatever else to hold the bones together in their proper position to heal and then, it will be at least 10-12 WEEKS of being off work, dealing with crutches and not putting any weight at all on that foot for that length of time, at the very least!

So here I am now, writing about the things that went awry last week and the computer  is still giving me hissy fits -the new one that is -as I am still working on trying to figure out what I'm am doing with a computer with a windows 8.1 operating system on it and trying to figure out how to get my e-mail program then to work the way I want it to do! That may never come about judging by the way that had been progressing but I'm determined I'll get it to behave and do what I want -eventually!

Checkback a few years from now and see if I ever did get that program to work properly!