Sometimes It Just Doesn't Work Out

Have you ever tried to plan an adventure that depended on factors outside yourself and had it fail miserably? Despite all my experience and efforts to avoid pitfalls, sometimes, it just doesn't work out.

This Saturday is my hubby's birthday and for the past year, he has sacrificed all of his toys and hobbies to get into his career path and support our little family. So, I wanted to show him how much I appreciated him on his special day and really surprise him with something that he would enjoy. We don't have much in the way of recreation here, but I thought it would be great to work with what we had and create something wonderful.

Have you ever heard the term "you can't get chicken salad out of chicken sh**."? Well, that was the adventure planning lesson that I hadn't yet learned. I had always managed to pull off miracles in the past and didn't expect anything different on this project. For the last month, I have been sneeky and persistent to surprise my husband with an Arctic birthday adventure. I spoke with all his fellow officers, friends at 3 differnent churches, neighbors, acquaintences through any remote contact and people I would just meet at the grocery store, gym or post office. I even posted a WANT ad on the local bulliten offering $75 bucks and a full tank of gas for anyone willing to rent us a snow mobile. (at $4/gallon, a full tank is a precious commodity.)

I finally got 2 calls early in the week and confirmed with both for today, Thursday the 22nd from 2-6 pm. (as hubby will be working graveyard on his birthday and needed to sleep the day before, not wanting to wreck his sleeping schedule etc... I thought I had thought of everything!) Everything was comming together beautifully... until I woke up.

I awoke on the big day with excitement and anticipation for the beautiful adventure I had planned. The sun was shining, the snow was glistening, the baby was in a happy disposition and everything appeard promising... Until I looked up the temperature... -60! Yes folks NEGATIVE 60 as in 60 degrees below 0. NOT ideal, but we had the gear, and I wasn't going to let this ruin the day.

Around 1pm I called to solidify details to pick up snow mobile option number one... the guy on the end of the line simply said "Nope. Too cold for machine. Call back another day." and hung up the phone. I thought this strange as there were at least 8 snow mobiles out on the icepack (frozen ocean) and aren't are designed for cruising around in the cold?

No problem, I had a back up. At 1:30 I called option number two who seemed very excited and promptly went outside to start up her machine. At 2:30 we received a call that it wasn't going to start for anything! Evidently, the little gas in its tank had frozen and it was going NOWHERE.

Okay, okay, we still had a sitter lined up, we could catch a taxi and rent some cross country skis to salvage the day... I called the sitter and ... no answer. WHAT!?! (Turns out her baby was sick and she had to go to an emergency clinic to make sure everything was okay... the baby was okay, but the day was not.)

Anyway, by 4:00 it would seem that NOTHING was going to work out. Backup plans one, two and three all fell through. So, we went for the ol' stand by... birthday dinner. We rearanged for a sitter at the last minute, and it looked as though things may just work out for 7:30pm. By 8:00pm the sitter fell through. So we thought "lets just take the baby." By the time we established plan #5, the baby was no longer in a good disposition and it was appearant that things were NOT working out.

I had no creative energy left to come up with another "back-up plan" or even be upset. Long story short, despite all my efforts to make his birthday something special, Hubby called in his own birthday order for take-out from a "so-so" resteraunt, ate to the seranade of a squawking baby in the back room and went to bed early. NICE!

It really wouldn't have been all that bad if I hadn't climbed up all over his case about providing the exact same birthday experience for me last month. Maybe Hubby had run into the same difficulties and dilemas in planning my great birthday adventure. (Funny how the ol' irony monster keeps biting me in the a$$.)

On the bright side, I learned that sometimes, it just doesn't work out... and that's okay. When it isn't meant to be, there is nothing you can do to change it. The mystery lies in why that always seem to happen on birthdays. I would love to hear any other birthday disasters or theories as to why they are inevitable. :) May your next adventure be destined to work out.