Dead Battery, Home Depot and Coke Chicken...

...All three are things that I've experienced in the past few days and could have done without.


First, the dead battery. Kylie went to her first Girl Scout meeting last Thursday. They made sit-upons to take to a campfire the next night. Friday night we trekked out to a campsite that was in the middle of nowhere. After many phone calls, several turn-arounds and then driving a mile down a dirt path we found the campsite. Sophie fell asleep on the way so once we got there I sat in the van with her while Steve went with Kylie to the camp fire. After 30 minutes I traded places with Steve. Things were going well until 45 minutes later when Steve came down to the fire to announce that our battery was dead. I didn't have jumper cables in the van (stupid me). We asked everyone at the camp fire and NO ONE had jumper cables either! Not even the men. There were probably 30 adults there and no one had any. We ended up calling LiLi's dad Rex who drove out and helped us. We didn't get home until 10 o'clock.


Second, Home Depot. Our contractor called the other day and casually said, "Oh by the way, we're going to be starting on your basement next week so you're going to need to pick out all your material over the weekend." Um, ok. I had a general idea of what I wanted, but now I had to pick out specific tile, laminate flooring, lighting, faucets, door knobs, refrigerator, freezer and microwave.


The majority of my week was spent at Home Depot picking out materials, writing them down and later researching them on the internet. Some items I loved in the store, only to find out later on the internet that they got terrible reviews. I think I spent 8 hours total at Home Depot, just in the last 4 days. Then I spent another 2 hours typing up a spreadsheet to give to the contractor. Did you know there are about 50 shades of brown grout? I picked one called mushroom, which looked an awful lot like 10 other shades of brown. And did I mention that when Steve and I were at Home Depot loading up our three carts, someone walked off with one of our carts (filled with our stuff) so we had to pretty much start over?


Third, Coke Chicken. I recently purchased a crock pot to help out with dinners on the nights that I work. The first recipe I tried was Coq Au Vin (chicken in wine sauce). It was ok, nothing great. The second recipe I tried was Italian Meatloaf and it was by far the best meatloaf I'd ever eaten. Yesterday I tried a recipe called Coke Chicken. It was easy to make (chicken breast, can of Coke and a jar of barbeque sauce) and got rave reviews online, so I was excited. I came home and the house smelled good. Steamed some rice and took a small bite of chicken. It was rubbery and tough. Yuck. I threw it out and we ordered pizza instead :(

I hope this week gets better....