Why This Blog Was Created

No my husband doesn't really hate me, he loves me very much, and this month we will celebrate our 10th anniversary. But I created this blog to document just how crazy I make him with my relentless pursuit of all things different or interesting. One of these days I will go too far. I thought for a moment that today was the day.

This afternoon Charles and our three youngest kids left the house to go pick up our oldest daughter, Amanda (she is 8) from her friend's house, where she spent the night. She lives off of highway 217, and I wanted to explore it a bit. So after getting Amanda we headed south. After several miles we came to a fork in the road. The fork to the left was marked "Martinez" and I knew that Martinez lead to AO-99 which would get us back home, so I figured hey, lets go for it.

Now Charles was not as excited about this, being unfamiliar with the area, though he did agree that Martinez intersected with A0-99 he argued that it would not necessarily go straight through. I told him that I had been looking at a map and that I thought it did, so he didn't argue, mostly because I made him feel bad about it. I told him he had NO sense of adventure, and so he just drove quietly. The road was very narrow, dirt only. We wound around, he said something about scenes from "Deliverance" coming to mind. I shooshed him and admired the wild flowers. I did note that to the east there were some pretty nasty looking clouds developing, but figured we were just a few miles from our road anyway so we would be ok.

We encountered a lot of mud. Great big ruts in the road and dark, rich mud. I could tell Charles was getting more and more nervous, and to tell you the truth I was getting really worried myself. We made it through a pretty rough mud pit and Sarah, our 6 year old, suggested that we turn around. Well Charles said he would rather not go through that again, and so we went forward.

About a mile or so down from that mudpit we came to a really low spot in the road, that had standing water over it. It was about 8 feet long, and Charles vascillated. I told him if we stayed stopped in the spot we were in we would get stuck, and there was no real good place to turn around, so on we went. We plowed into the big old mud pit and stopped. Bottomed out. No going foreward, no going back.

This is the point where I am grateful there were no divorce attorneys around.

Well, we were out in the middle of nowhere, stuck in the middle of what was momentarily going to become a raging river, with four panicked children in the car, and a man about to explode. He got out and started walking for help.

Fortunately there was a ranch house just down the road about a quarter of a mile. He saw a man out mowing, and yelled for him to get his attention, but the guy didn't hear him, so he walked on down a little further. All of a sudden the mowing man drove up in his truck and said, "My wife thinks someone is dying down here. Are you dying? Or are you just screaming for the hell of it?" Charles said no, he was trying to get his attention, but didn't, so figured he would try to find help elsewhere.

The kindly samaritan said, "Oh you got stuck in the mud pit, come on lets' go" and drove him back to our van, chastizing him the whole way. He informed Charles that we weren't on Martinez but on a private ranch (yikes) and that people come joyriding all the time and he is always pulling them out and that we had no business being down there and if he breaks his axle we are paying for it, $2000, do you understand me???

Well, I was pretty relieved to see them drive up...the thunder is booming behind me, and I was about five minutes from having to yank the kids out of the van and run for high ground to watch the river sweep away our only vehicle. The guy hitched a line to our undercarriage and I slid in behind the wheel. I started it up and as soon as he gave me a little tug our van was free. He cautioned us that it was another couple of miles until the road hits a T. If we go to the left it leads to Edgewood (where we live) if we go to the right it heads for Moriarty. He said if we beat the rain to the road we could go left, but if it is raining we wouldn't be able to make it down that way and would have to head into Moriarty, if we even make it. He said we were about 9 miles from paved road.

Well, we got to the T, and it was just starting to sprinkle. We could see our ridge a few miles down and decided to just go for it. On the way we saw what he meant about not making it in the rain, there was a LOT of mud down that way. But fortunately we made it into our driveway just as it started pouring.

Charles's shoes are ruined. His pants are muddy. I think I have to go buy him some beer. But as we got out of the van, the kids said "That was FUN!"

So maybe I feel a little vindicated...