Birthday Mishaps

  Amidst all of my anxieties about life, my future, and just the general state of the world. My day to day life has been surprisingly funny and good lately. So I thought I would share one of those antidotes. 

It was my Dad's birthday two days ago and I stressed about it more than I needed to. Mainly because he's incredibly hard to buy for. If he wants something he buys it. (within reason of course) I did manage to find him something this year, so that took away some of the stress.

I shouldn't have worried, he came up with his own plans to celebrate. He bought himself a side by side. (If you don't know what that is a quick google search should explain) He got an amazing deal on it. But both my mom and I were less than enthusiastic about it, imagining the worst happening. The injuries that it would bring. 

My Dad didn't seem bothered by any of that. As soon as he brought it home he took three of my younger siblings out for a ride. He did put helmets on them and these contraptions actually have seatbelts so safer than you'd think.

They loved it of course the little hellions. 

I should mention here that we live kinda in the mountains and right beside a fairly huge forest. So it is something we can use a lot and he claims to want to use it for hunting so it wasn't a useless buy. (My dad's an Intj and I don't think he's capable of doing that.)

He took me and my older siblings out, and right away we saw a herd of deer. Which was pretty cool. We went around a few trails up and down some fairly steep hills. It was a blast except for the freezing wind blasting us in the face. We headed back to warm up and he somehow talked my mom into going too. 

She had the most misgivings but agreed to go. My sister and I tagged along for that ride simply to see her reaction. It went great, at first she was a little frantic and kept telling him to slow down. Yelled some random things about not trusting my Dad or the government. She started to enjoy it eventually. He followed basically the same trail we had taken earlier we went down a super steep hill and then into a wooded area turned a corner and something suddenly broke. At first, we thought we were stuck on something and my Dad couldn't find anything wrong. I saw grey stuff on the ground behind us, which turned out to be oil. 

Then we quickly came to the terrible conclusion that something had burst and we couldn't drive it back. 

This was bad for a few reasons it was nearly 5:00 and getting dark, it's freezing because ugh Canada, and lastly we would have to hike back up this ginormous, monstrosity of a hill. 

So with no other choices, we started hiking out of the trees and back to the trail. After we were almost clear my Dad decided to run back and try one more thing with the side by side. (because splitting up in a forest is always smart.)

My sister, mom, and I stopped just out of the trees and waited for him. Talking about 411's, bigfoot, and bears because we're that family. When my sister suddenly went pale and her eyes bugged out. This completely broke the calm facade I had been pretending to have.

"There's someone in the trees." She hissed. Which is basically the last thing you want to hear when standing in the middle of nowhere. 

I did the whole 'wut' thing and she grabbed my face to angle it towards the person. Me being the reasonable person that I am. I closed my eyes because the logic of 'if I can't see you, you can't see me' has always stuck with me. I luckily had cell service so I called my dad and covertly said. "We're not alone." In the most melodramatic way ever.

So he basically ran back to us just in time for this woman to break through the trees in front of us. She had walked in from the road and had gotten a little turned around so we gave her directions and went our merry way. 

I was relieved that the person my sister had seen wasn't Micheal Myers and just a woman in runners (poor shoe choice for the snowy woods but I won't judge.) 

After that close call, we began the long walk home. It was fairly uneventful thank goodness. But my mom did lament her decision to come. Which I couldn't really blame her for. 

I started to enjoy our walk filled with banter and insults. It also showed just how perfect for each other my parents are. My mom decided to lead because she wanted to get back to the kids. At one point she picked up a big branch to protect herself with but decided it was far too heavy and dropped it in the middle of the trail. ( My Dad threw it back in the trees when he came up to it.)

She also at some point dropped her scarf, which he collected without comment. (Intj's and Enfps are soulmates and it really shows) They do drive each other nuts though. Well, we all do really.

We made it back safe and sound, and the vehicle that my brother dubbed the Razor Crest is in the shop getting fixed.

My mom has decided that she and the younger kids will never ride it again. 

Hope this little mishap was a bit entertaining. (I'm currently suffering from a cold which I'm pretty sure is related)