It happens. Yep, everyday.  It always brings me back to the famous scene in Forest Gump when he is running and steps in “it.”  The bumper sticker guy doesn’t know what to do.  Forrest just says, “it happens.”  So what is “it?”  In the movie it was very specific about what “it” was, but for me it is more broad.  For me when I say “it happens” I mean that life happens.  Most of the time we are not ready, and no matter how much control we think we have, we really don’t.

This picture is case and point.  It was two years ago and yes they are both stuck in the mud, it happens.  I decided to write this for my benefit.  This week has stacked up and is a doozy.  I am trying to convince myself that “it” happens and it is okay that it does.  I don’t have any control over most of it, so just move on down the road.

Monday started off muddy.  It rained pretty good on Friday and didn’t dry over the weekend.  I am having to meet compaction requirements on the job I’m working on and the dirt that we dug out was wet to begin with, so it’s a lot of mud.  Drying mud is about as fun as watching paint dry and takes about four times as long.  I don’t have any control over the weather so I just chalked that up to it happens and keep stirring my dirt with hopes that it will not rain again for a while.

I decided that I needed to get a skid loader out to the job site so Monday morning I go and get my trailer and pull into the pasture to get it.  I don’t know I must have had a little too much rolling around between my ears.  As I backed it on the trailer my track came down on the wheel well of the trailer, smashing it.  AAAAHHHHH,  I spent the next hour trying to pull the metal off of the tire so that I could pull the trailer 30 miles to the job site.  It happens, I guess,  fix it and move on.

It now almost noon, I stir my dirt and get a little bit accomplished but I have to leave at three-thirty because Kylee has a doctor’s appointment at four.  Two weeks ago she got a concussion from being dehydrated and standing up to fast.  Who knew, something about vessels not constricting and pushing the blood back up to your head fast enough.  She blacked out and must have hit her head on something.  She doesn’t remember, so now concussion protocol here we are.  She had a good appointment and is on her way to a full recovery.  We drove separate vehicles because she was coming from school and me from work.  As we are walking to our cars I hear someone yell at me.

He is waving and says, “is this your truck.”

“Yes,” I say.

He says, ” a little while ago a guy in a brown car pull in here and grabbed an orange case out of the back of your truck, it looked like a chain saw.”

I look in the back of the truck and sure enough my chainsaw is gone.  A nice thousand dollar bill down the drain.  It happens.  I just hope he feeds his kids with the money or maybe gets some jobs trimming trees to help support his family.   We can hope right.  I take a deep breath and head on down the road.

I guess I was living right on Tuesday because besides the mud I don’t think I broke anything.  That brings us to today.

I get to the job site and am visiting with my inspector.  I happen to look over at the excavator and the pile of rock that is next to it.  I don’t know what switch went off in my brain but I blurted out, “someones been in my excavator.”  I walk over and sure enough someone had been in it.  Started it up and helped themselves to some of the rock on the project.  It’s interesting because I had the keys in my pocket.  equipment keys are all the same, but still, come on guys.  It happens, at least it was still on its tracks, still had fuel, and the batteries were still there.

So where do I go from here.  Life has definitely happened this week.  I can’t say that I’m all that excited about it, but it is what it is.  I suppose I could have paid a little more attention as I came up on the trailer or locked the chainsaw up.  I suppose I could have done a lot of things different, but I didn’t.  So it happened.  I suppose I could start to lose my faith in humanity, but really, is a chainsaw or a little bit of rock really worth that.  I suppose I should start to lock things up tighter and not believe that people are good, But I won’t.  People are good and for what ever reason these people evidently needed my stuff a lot more than me.  I will still probably be day dreaming tomorrow so please don’t stand on the wheel wells of my trailer.

In all reality what have I really lost.  Nothing.  I have what is important to me.  I have what really matters.  I have my family, a roof over my head and food on the table.  I have people who let me love them and they love me back.  I have all I need and you know what.  That happens too.