This afternoon, I should have been on the bus to Baltimore.  I didn't make it. 

Mom and I pulled away from the house, headed for the bus station, and within moments, we were looking at each other, asking "Does something feel wrong to you?"  The van's strange list was quickly discovered: a flat front tire.  Mom pulled out the manual, and soon discovered that getting to the spare and the jack was going to require shifting a lot of stuff out of the van.  So we started moving bags and boxes.  There was still a chance we could make it to the bus station if we got the tire changed quickly.

We got the jack and the spare out, and set them next to the van.  People were out for their afternoon strolls, and I'm sure we made an entertaining picture - two women, heads bent over a manual, next to a badly leaning minivan that had disgorged most of its contents onto the lawn.  

Our jokes about "who needs boys to change a flat?" went flat when Mom first tried to loosen the lug nuts.  I tried next, and I wasn't getting anywhere either.  But I get stubborn.  Consequently, I now have a slightly strained muscle in my right leg.  But we got those lug nuts loosened, even if it did take both me and Mom pulling on the last one to get it to budge.  In a congratulatory mood, we went about setting up the jack.  

Problem - we couldn't figure out where to put it.  The manual was very specific, yet oddly unclear.  There was something about a notch behind the tire and lining up the jack with something right behind the notch.  I found a notch, but I couldn't figure out what the jack was supposed to line up with.  Mom kept asking, "Are you sure that's the notch?"  "Yes, that's the only thing that looks like a notch.  But I can't figure out where the jack should go."  "But are you sure that's the notch?  I can't feel anything."  Turns out the place where the jack should've gone had been sort of . . . mangled.  So we called in the professionals - "that's what we pay for road side assistance for," reasoned my mother.  

I should've been on the bus to Baltimore this afternoon.  Instead, I was sitting on the front porch in the sunshine, luxuriating in the brief taste of spring we had today.  Then I was baking cookies with my mother.  Then I was entrusted with dinner while my mom got new tires on the van.  I should really watch more cooking shows and fewer home decorating programs.  I bet if I watched more cooking shows, I wouldn't have had to pick charred bits of onion out of the pan. 

I should be in Baltimore, and I'm looking forward to getting back, but I'm not sorry for the delay.  It would've been much less entertaining spending the afternoon on the bus.