also, we had to stay the night unexpectedly, due to rained out roads, and let's just say that b now calls maxi pads "pull-ups"

A few weekends ago, some friends invited us up to a family cabin. There was a possibility for single-track biking, and while I was game for it, I warned Rob that if he broke anything while riding, I would break the rest of his uninsured ass and leave him up there.

It must be really exciting to be married to me.

Well, he took me so seriously that, when the four-wheeler he was riding began to flip and roll down the hill, he leapt from it, tucked, and rolled out of the way. While he was uninjured other than some bruising and tenderness, the four-wheeler was totaled. Damage to relationships has yet to be tallied.

First, seeing my husband so broken over the latest in a string of missteps or accidents was immensely softening to my initial anger. Second, I've been in the scenario where all the equipment returned intact, and the man did not. Third, this was not our four-wheeler, but belonged to a family that has been very generous to me over the years. Fourth, due to a series of unfortunate events immediately following the rolling ATV, two others were damaged.

Evidently, when someone you know goes flipping an ATV down a hill, it's natural to jump off your own and run towards your friend. Locked or not, ATVs don't stay in one place when stopped on a hill, and the surrounding trees helpfully kept those two wandering machines from going too far. Not so helpful: trees don't step on the brakes and gently slow things down. Trees go crunch and stop things rather abruptly. We're still working out how to make this right and how to ensure that relationships are preserved and (somehow) blessed throughout. Thankfully, the owner of said ATVs was relieved to hear that Rob was uninjured and enormously gracious about the whole thing.

But it's still hard. We can't just write a check to fix things, because we have no money. No one else can fix it for us, and so we're just in a really uncomfortable place that we're still figuring out how to extricate ourselves from. Oh, and rely on God and stuff. More on that tomorrow.