How Is It Going? . . . You Mean Really?

Life isn't always a bed of roses. What an interesting saying! Who would really want to sleep in a bed of roses anyway? Sure it might smell good at first, but after awhile, the scent would certainly turn from intoxicating to just plain toxic. And how about the thorns? Nobody in their right mind would want to crawl into bed at the end of a long day with a bunch of razor stemmed flowers no matter how good they smelled. So much for that idiom. Try this one; “You made your bed, now you have to sleep in it”? That is one that is pretty easy for me to relate to right now. Since this blog is a chronicle of my little adventure, it seems only right to document some of the lows as well as the highs. Since I'm in a bit of a mood, let me share a little bit about the bed I find myself in by doing a little creative venting. While there are several things I would love to 'vent' about, I'll just blow steam related to one for now; The DayMobile. You can find the picture of our seemingly wonderful Blazer earlier in the blog. (Blazer - an appropriate name for a vehicle prone to burning its owners) This particular one turns out to be like a Batmobile. More accurately a VampireMobile. For over a month it has been draining . . . money, time, money, energy, security, money, and overall piece of mind. Jesse (my hero) has been the garlic protecting me from getting completely sucked dry. He has done everything he can do to keep it on the road. He's replaced pulleys, brakes, spark plugs, bearings, serpentine belts, and headlights. He has even given me the key to the Ford while he works on the VampMobile. Still, one little problem remains; there's no heat. So, Jesse replaced the thermostat. (Did I tell you Jesse is my hero?) Still no heat. Alas, there is only so much a guy can do. You can imagine that a heater is a pretty important thing if it's September in Alaska. SO, there was no choice but to take the VampMobile to the local house of horrors (service station). It took very little time to for the Vamp pamperer to identify the problem: the heater is dead to the core. The remedy involves squeezing out five hundred units of blood from our remaining turnips. That may keep the ol' VM prowling the darkness through the long, eternal, upcoming winter. I hope. It's hard to have faith in a Vampire. You never really want to turn your back. As I look for the moral of this story all I can come up with is that nobody purposely picks a bad place to crash for the night or a lemon of a car for that matter. And, it's pretty hard to make lemonade out of a hunk of metal and fiberglass. This is definitely not a bed of roses. As the steam blowing subsides, I realize that I have been looking at the whole thing all wrong. All the sudden, my mind breaks into a Mac Davis song, and I see another bed of roses. “You've got to stop and smell the roses. You've got to count your many blessings everyday. You're going to find your way to heaven is a dark and dusty road. If you don;t stop to smell the roses along the way.” That's a horse of a different color. So, I guess I'll dust myself off and be grateful for the garlic and turnips in my life that work to keep the VM immortal . . . while I look for another “Night Rider”.