Ill Fated Journey

And here's yet another sad story of a family roadtrip. It seems I have a lot of these. I'm sensing a theme.

Going to the ranch is always a bit of a chore. It is six hours away, after all. But compounding the joy is that my husband can be a blinding pain in the posterior when getting ready to leave. He has a mental travel itenerary (to which I may or may not be privvy) and if we are even a nanosecond behind, he turns into a surly bear. The good news is that he packed his stuff into the truck the night before and we got off in record time. Yay!

So, I may have mentioned my love affair with our portable DVD player. Unfortunately, speaking aloud of this love angered the gods and they struck my beloved DVD player down on my last road trip. You know, like last week. So, good husband that he is, T braved MegaMart the night before to get a 12V plug adapter for the DVD player. He's a car guy, so he got the cheaper/more power version from the auto parts section. This thing was so powerful it could practically take over and drive the truck for us! But it had stuff that had to be connected to other stuff, and there were screws and washers and lock washers, and a body open to the circuit boards, and a really bouncy diesel truck. So of course the lock washer jumped off the screw and dived into the body of the adapter. I could hear it rattling around in there - and then I couldn't.

DVD player: fail.

Happy husband: fail.

So we pulled over and he got a screw driver out of the back of the truck and proceeds to dissect the darn thing on the tailgate, to no avail. He finally threw his hands up in disgust and stalked off to the cab. Enter the silent, jaw-clenching, surly bear version of my formerly sunny spouse. I'm there in the passenger seat trying to get more parts loose so I can get into the heart of the thing as he shoots me sidelong glances and grinds his teeth, helpfully huffing, "We'll just pick up a cheap one at the truck stop," or "I should have just gotten the cheap one," or "We'll just throw it away. We can't use it with that washer in there." I die a little with each comment, feeling like I had spoiled his whole weekend - he was so tickled with himself for remembering to buy it in the first place. I finally had to tell him to knock it off because his "help" was making me suicidal.

Happy ending: When we stop for lunch, we go in shifts so someone can stay with the kids and/or dogs. I took Z in first, so T had some time to kill. When we finally emerged, T was triumphantly putting the adapter back together. He had taken the entire thing apart, removing every screw, until he finally found the lock washer. We were a little afraid to plug it in, but when we did it worked like a charm. Yay for handy husbands! Road trip saved! The happy husband was back - at least until viruspalooza pulled into his sinuses. Then not so much.