Everything breaks
Yesterday was one of those days when every little thing turned from bad to worse in such a comical progression that it seems like it had to have been scripted by a sadist.
It was a Sunday, which is normally my one day a week I get to sleep in, but I decided to get up early anyway so I could tackle some overdue yard work before it got too hot out. After about an hour when I was starting to tidy up, I tried to get inside only to find that the front door wouldn't budge. No problem, I thought, I could just come in through the cellar entrance to check if the door had someone locked itself, but when I got to the front door, the handle fell off. Crap, I thought. So here I am, covered in sweat and weed whacker debris and WD-40, ineptly poking around a busted door handle with some screwdrivers and an iPad queued up with Google searches on how to fix this particular type of busted door handle. All the while, my daughter is running around the house yelling her little head off, with my wife is cursing me for not being a natural handyman and me silently cursing my own father for not being a handyman in his own right and therefore never having any sort of handy know-how to pass on to me.
I eventually swallowed my pride and realized that I would probably need to just buy another damn door handle, but as I'm getting ready to head out to Lowe's, my wife asks if I can take her car because there's a place nearby where I can get the oil changed, and, oh by the way, she hasn't changed her car's oil in over a year. Fine, I say. I get in her car, turn the key, and then... nothing. Her car battery was dead, probably because the running lights were accidentally left on overnight. Great. Now I get to call AAA to come over and replace the battery before driving to Lowe's to buy a new front door handle and lock combo (which are way more expensive than you'd realize) and then heading over to a nearby Firestone to get her car's oil changed, only to be informed that I needed to purchase three new tires because the tread had worn out, they were cracking, and were dangerously under-inflated. And, then to cap it all off, my credit card was declined at Firestone, apparently for no other reason than to preemptively make sure I wasn't fraudulently attempting to purchase a round of tires in my spare time. By the end of the day, I wouldn't have been surprised if an Acme-brand anvil had fallen out of the sky to smote me on the spot.
All of this is to say, that as a father and as a property owner, no matter how much crap comes your way, you've got to buck up and prepare to be the final line of defense. As much as I wanted to have a low-key day spent watching Toy Story 3 for the Nth time with my daughter and maybe catch up reading some WWII history during her nap, life suddenly presented me with a mountain of turds and only a plastic spoon to clear away the mess. While I may not have the ingrained talent to fix the variety of mechanical disasters I faced over the weekend (why can't broken cars be repaired by means of sparkling color commentary???), it was definitely a lesson in resiliency, and being a parent is nothing if you aren't resilient.