It Was the Best of Times, it Was the Worst of Times . . .

My weekend away from Blogland was a little mixed. Saturday was my stitchery group's monthly get together, and that's ALWAYS a nice time for us, with little gifts and treats, good food, and talk and sharing with friends while working on hand work projects. And the gathering was just as much fun as I anticipated.

This month, we met at Julie's house, and a couple hours after I arrived, a neighbor came knocking on Julie's door to let me know there was a nail in one of my tires. I went outside to look, and sure enough, there was a nail in the tire--but not quite ALL the way in. I decided that driving home would force it in further, so I'd pull it out and see what happened. If the tire went flat, I had plenty of time to call AAA to come out and change my tire.

I borrowed a pair of pliers and pulled out the nail, which was tiny--about a half inch long, and nearly half of that had been sticking out of the tire, so I had high hopes that all would be fine.

Yeah, you probably guessed it: all wasn't fine. I went out to check the tire an hour or two later and it was flat as a pancake, so I called AAA. The AAA guy came out and changed my tire, only to find my spare was flat as well. Probably not too surprising since I don't think the spare had been used in the 12 years it had been sitting in the car. Of course, the AAA truck came equipped with a cannister of air . . . except the driver had used all the air on another call and hadn't refilled it. So he had to go off and do that and come back and fill my tire, but we found that for some reason, it wasn't filling the tire all the way and I'd need to go to a gas station to fill it the rest of the way.

Of course, that was pretty much the end of my day at Julie's, but the gathering was breaking up anyway. I drove to the gas station and found I had to put four quarters into the air machine--and I didn't have change. So I pulled a dollar bill out of my purse and went inside the station to get change for the air.

The guy in the gas station was kind enough to turn on the air machine for me free of charge, but when I hurried to get air in my tire before the machine turned off, I accidentally lost hold of that dollar bill and had to run after it--it was a windy day. And I wasn't sure how much air I needed, but since the wind kept whipping my hair into my eyes and I couldn't read the gauge anyway, it didn't really matter. When that dollar bill flew out of my hand again and I had to chase it down a second time, I figured that I probably had enough air in that tire, and if I didn't, I didn't really care anyway.

Driving home, I saw a huge billowing cloud of black, black smoke rising up. You'll understand, I'm sure, that I figured it was probably my house on fire--but it wasn't. As I got closer, I could see the flames shooting up into the sky--it was a scary sight! Fire engines passed me again and again, coming from several directions, during the rest of the drive home. I learned later that one home was destroyed and another had extensive damage because the fire had jumped to the neighboring home. What a sad day for those families. I guess a flat tire wasn't so bad after all.

Today, Sunday, Hubby took my car to get the tire repaired. And here's the really weird thing I just don't understand at all. They didn't find a puncture in the tire, but the valve stem was leaking. How did the tire go flat after I pulled the nail out if it was the valve stem and not the tire? And no, the nail wasn't anywhere near the valve stem. Very strange.

Despite the interruptions during the day, by Saturday evening I finished the March Country Cottages block, Shabby Fabric's free block of the month--

I'll tell you about the rest of my weekend projects tomorrow--now it's time for bed. I suspect it's going to be hard adjusting to Daylight Savings Time again! See you tomorrow.