Taking the Bad With the Good

The Bad

Yesterday morning, A. took the lawn tractor down to the beach to start the water pump. When he tried to start the tractor again to come back up to the house, the engine blew. Like, oil-leaking-everywhere, no-hope-of-recovery blew. And it was on the wrong side of the road. Beyond the bottom of the driveway. Uphill all the way to the house.

At first we thought if we could just get it to the bottom of the driveway, we could chain it to the truck and pull it the rest of the way up that way. So we pushed it up the little ridge from the lakeshore and waited for a break in the heavy traffic of a Saturday morning in the summer. Then we started pushing it across the road. And then some kind of special lever on the back that disengages to put the tractor in neutral randomly re-engaged, so it wasn't in neutral anymore. Which meant the back wheels were dragging and pushing suddenly got about five times as hard. And then a car appeared. Whoops.

We did manage to get it across the road with some difficulty, but no bodily harm. But our plan to hook it to the truck the rest of the way didn't work, because it wouldn't stay in neutral to roll up the driveway. A. needed to be next to it so he could kick it back into neutral when it slipped out. Which meant we needed to push it. Or, in my case, pull it. With the rope we had looped around the axle. So I pulled like a draft horse on the front, A. pushed from the back, and we slowly slogged our way up (and I do mean UP--everything is uphill when you're coming from the lake) to the house, finally leaving the tractor on the lawn by the house.

Then A. spent about half an hour disconnecting things so he could lift the engine out, with the idea that he would just order a whole new engine and put it in himself. I guess no one rebuilds small engines anymore--like so much else, it's cheaper to just buy a whole new one. But after he got it out and figured out what kind of engine he would need, he discovered those particular engines are not cheap. And it will actually be cheaper to buy a whole new tractor.

So that was not such a good start to the day.

But then!

The Good

Yesterday was the annual village festival. We didn't attend most of the events, but we did go to the parade. With Cubby, of course. Who loved it, of course. Especially the fife and drum corps. All that wonderful noise was just his scene. This year, the festival had a circus theme, so there were several clowns in the parade. And, this being upstate New York, several of the clowns were carrying beers as they cavorted their way down Main Street. Awesome.

Plus, we got to play with the granddaughter of one of the MiL's friends, a little girl only a few months older than Cubby who is OH MY GOD SO ADORABLE with her little curls and blue eyes. Of course, with babies under a year, "playing" is a relative term. Mostly, Clementine (even her NAME is adorable) grabbed at Cubby's feet in the chariot and attempted to grab his face. And he just stared quite solemnly at this other grabby small person. But it was still beyond cute to see two babies examining each other.

So at least we ended the day on a good note.