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Confession: We never made it to the park last Saturday for Kids to Parks day.
It wasn’t for lack of trying though. There were a number of things that came up that just made it impossible.
It rained all week, including Friday night, and we were on flood watch. This meant that Sunshine’s Friday night campout was canceled. She was supposed to camp that night and then go to a church youth activity on Saturday, not returning home until the evening. Canceling the campout meant she only went to the activity on Saturday, and the drop-off time was right when we were supposed to be at Shenandoah NP, at the Kids to Parks activity.
I thought about just going to our local trails park for some hiking, but all the rain left everything super wet and muddy and the trails closed. And I needed to finish prepping the RV for a rental, so between that and dropping off Sunshine, I realized we didn’t really have time in the morning to go hiking.
The RV was being picked up in the afternoon, so I thought we could see if a different park was open after the RV was picked up. Unfortunately, there was an unexpected disaster that threw me off balance and made sure nothing else happened last Saturday.
Right before the renters arrived I was running through the pre-rental checklist and discovered a problem with the water. It was just trickling out of the faucets, but I could hear water gushing somewhere else. That somewhere else turned out to be the cabinet where the water heater is, so I turned everything off quickly and opened the cabinet to see what was going on.
A quick look with the headlamp revealed the problem: a giant gash in the water heater tank. We had problems with the lines freezing this past winter, but supposedly the affected parts had been replaced when we took it in a couple months ago. Somehow, not sure how, they had missed the giant hole in the water tank. Needless to say, the renters weren’t able to take the RV since they wouldn’t be able to use the water at all. They were very nice and understanding about the situation, but I felt very bad about having to cancel on them last minute.
Jeremy was at work during all this, so I got to deal with it all by myself. Let’s just say I don’t handle that kind of stress very well. By the time I’d contacted the dealership to arrange a drop off time so they could replace the water heater tank, it was getting late and I was not in the mood to wrangle the boys into the car and onto the trails.
In retrospect though, going on a hike would have been a great way to work through some of the frustrations of the day.
There are times when things don’t go the way we planned and we have to go with the flow.
In this case, my plan A, plan B, and plan C all tanked. Our kids to parks day experience was unsalvageable. Ideally I would have salvaged things with a plan D, but sometimes that’s just not going to happen. A good attitude helps smooth things over when plans go awry, though I’ll admit my attitude wasn’t up to snuff in this case. But I learned a lot and I’d like to think that next time I’ll handle a similarly stressful situation with a bit more grace and aplomb, though I sincerely hope I won’t be in a similarly stressful situation for a long time to come.
Have there been times when you’ve been able to hike through the frustrations of life? Did your Kids to Parks day go as planned?
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