The day began like any other...with breakfast at Skillet's for my favorite strawberry waffles, a few necessary errands around town (we needed a new beach pass and mulch), and a quick trip to pick up an awesome and expensive luggage rack from Steven's buddy for our upcoming Michigan road trip.
Shortly after accomplishing these Saturday morning tasks, I was summoned to the beach to retrieve my oldest daughter...she had been watching an EVP volleyball tournament with friends. Waving goodbye to my husband, who was busily spreading mulch, I quickly arrived at the beach turnabout, picked up Alissa and once again proceeded homeward.
As we entered our subdivision, the sky began to darken in anticipation of a heavy rain. Not wanting to get caught in the storm, I popped the button for the garage door and crept forward into my normal spot. All of a sudden, we heard a grinding and crunching noise from above! I had completely forgotten about the luggage rack!
Not knowing what to do next, I asked Alissa to run for her father while I stayed put. Waiting for his arrival took what seemed like hours...I knew he was going to freak-out! But he didn't. He opened the door from the house to the garage and found me with the luggage rack wedged in place...and became silent. Uh-oh. Silence is bad...very bad. Picture in your mind what he was looking at...the truck is completely stuck...the rack is actually touching the lifted garage door...the back end of the rack is totally wedged between the door frame and the ceiling...leaving me virtually unable to move forward or backward. All the while he's trying not to look at me as I smile at him sheepishly.
After examining the car for about ten minutes (I attempted to run for the camera to take pictures at this point...but he stopped me, with just a glare...yet another stupid move on my part) he came up with a plan. Since the rack was completely wedged and couldn't be removed by driving the truck either forward or backward...he instructed me to completely let the air out of the back tires. I wasn't sure how to do this...but knew I better learn fast...I worked on the left tire and he worked on the right. (By the way, while we were doing this, he was grumbling under his breath the whole time because he just had our tires filled with nitrogen at $50 a pop...on the bright side...at least he was no longer silent!)
So, with all of the air finally out of both rear tires the rack broke free...and took out a huge chunk of the framing around the garage in the process! More not so nice words out of my lovely husband's mouth who was definitely not finding any humor in the newest aspects of the situation...at all. He then climbed into the driver's seat, slammed the door shut, and backed out so we could survey the damage...to both the garage and the rack. To me...the rack didn't look too bad. To Steven...it looked horrifying. I thought the huge streaks of paint down the entire top looked kind of like racing stripes. I made the mistake of telling him so. Not smart.
He gently (too little, too late) removed the rack from the top of the truck and laid it out on the garage floor to examine more closely. Then, using a greenie (those little scrubbies you use on dishes) and some elbow grease...the residue of paint and gunk came off...and left behind huge blank streaks where the protective wax coating had been!
Two more hours later...and one tube of scratching compound...followed by a hand waxing...it was almost as good as new. He still thinks I'm a complete idiot but he's finally starting to see the humor in yesterday...although he surely won't tell me that...but I overheard him telling of my Saturday adventure to his sister...and he actually laughed! Trust me, it's so much better than his silence!!!
