When we said hello to our neighbor the other day, he asked Zack, “What have you done today? What will she write about next week?!” Considering how dirty we were, he knew we’d been busy, as usual. Just before, we’d been in the hardware store. The young man there (who was on duty the day we broke the farm jack) greeted me with, “What have you been doing today?” This really meant, “Have you broken anything interesting?”

The truth is, I HAVE broken a few things lately, a minor spate of bad luck that began with that farm jack. A few days ago, I was helping Zack put together a small sand blaster. I broke part of the water trap. Yesterday we were putting regulators on small oxygen and acetylene tanks, and the gauges wouldn’t work. We tried everything. Turns out Tractor Supply had sent us home with empty tanks instead of full. I can’t be blamed for THAT.

Two days ago, things started as they often do. Zack promised me the day to myself, to straighten up the house a little after a whole year of this recovery thing. When he asks me (often) if I’ve done this or that or why something isn’t all neat, tidy and organized, I answer, “I haven’t been here,” which is basically true.

So instead of a few hours to myself, after 30 minutes, Zack was back from the barn. “I need you to do one tiny, little thing. It’ll be easy,” he promised. I’ve heard this before. Nothing is ever easy. I choked down my cereal and vitamins, threw on my boots, grabbed a pair of work gloves, and headed to the workshop.

“Get under the truck,” Zack said. “What?!!!! I just washed my hair!” Muttering his usual, “Nothing’s too good for my baby,” he presented me with an old towel. Minutes later, I was wedged under the bed of the old green truck, holding a nut firmly in place with a crescent wrench. This was NOT the way I had envisioned my morning.

Zack was removing something from the truck bed with the high impact wrench. This was challenge enough for his poor, disabled hands, but he was determined. My job was to hold the crescent wrench tightly and let the power tool up above me do the work (if he could only hang onto it).

It never occurred to me to cup my free hand under the nut, for when it fell, it dropped like a bomb and hit me smack on the upper lip. I’m lucky I didn’t lose a tooth. And thank goodness I wore sunglasses as safety glasses. Other than a heartfelt exclamation, I kept quiet for the last three nuts and carefully caught each one. I scooted out from under the truck and headed inside for ice. My upper lip was already swelling. Zack said it looked like a half done session with the lip plumper. All this from a little nut. Who’d a thunk it? The ice probably helped. All that’s left is a bruise. Another bullet dodged.

Yesterday, before our neighbor saw us, we shoveled hundreds of pounds of ancient wheat or oats from the same trailer involved in the farm jack incident last month. Now you all know that Zack is recovering from paralysis, so that meant I did a LOT of shoveling. He did what he could, and managed to break some up with a fork. With the trailer now out in the open, the old grain “dust” will solidify with rain. I’m guessing the grain was circa late sixties, “vintage,” and seasoned with decades of rodent — ah — embellishment. So we emptied it. We’ve done some pretty dirty jobs out here in the last eight or nine years, but this might be the winner.

And THAT is what I wrote about this week. May all YOUR misadventures be small ones.

(Gene Ellis, Ed.D is a Bosque County resident who returned to the family farm after years of living in New Orleans, New York, and Florida. She is an artist who holds a doctoral degree from New York University and is writing a book about the minor catastrophes of life.)