Amazing Weekend...EXCEPT...

You know how I have this complex now that we can't seem to have a nice trip without something sort of raining on the parade?  Jacob's injuries on our midwest travels last spring, COVID after Cedar Point, COVID before Disney plus a hurricane, all of the health problems before almost every trip this summer.  I had hoped our mostly uneventful Cedar Point trip in August this year broke the curse (although we did have a couple minor hiccups then, too), but apparently not.

Friday started out as such a good day.  We did have a couple appointments for Jacob--he had a PT appointment where I finally scheduled some PT for myself for my bum arm, and then we met with the GI doctor.  She wasn't particularly concerned either, and originally we were just going to continue the omeprazole for a couple more months, but I knew it probably wouldn't keep Jacob content if we didn't have some sort of better action plan.  So at the last minute I asked if it could be a bacterial overgrowth or anything like that, so we scheduled for a breath test and lactose intolerance test Thursday.  That felt better than just waiting around doing the same thing we did most of the summer, at least.  However, it hit me that the diet for the test is pretty complex--or rather, seriously simple to the point that it needs me to be preparing all of his food the entire day before--so we postponed for a week to plan a bit better and make the work situation a little less complicated.  I guess for now we just keep an eye on him and hope for the best. 

I came home from those appointments, packed up, and got ready to leave for my weekend in Binghamton with Heather and Mason that was long overdue.  I hatched a plan the night before to try to hit up Buttermilk Falls outside Ithaca, since I hadn't been there before but had heard good things.  I realized that Taughannock Falls was right on the way so I figured I'd hop off there for five minutes just to run to the observation deck and see what the falls looked like that day.  If you recall, last time I went there it was a giant torrent of water because of crazy rains the night before.  I knew it would be much less this time, but wasn't sure how much less.  Also, fall leaves are really just starting so I didn't have high hopes for that, but I figured keeping expectations low was better than prime fall time when you're expecting amazing and just end up with a bunch of yellows and browns.

My drive was really nice--sunny, pleasant, lovely country roads, and a giant Slurpee.  I did my quick stop-off at Taughannock, which was much busier than it was last time I was there.  I snagged a parking spot and quickly walked to the observation area.  Unfortunately, the sun was so bright that it was hard to get good pictures, particularly since the water was just a trickle compared to my last visit.  

I had to use my real camera to get this shot because the glare was too much for my phone.  The colors were just starting.

I did get to see a large bird (probably a hawk or vulture) flying around, which was cool but very hard to capture with the glare.  

It's blurry up close but at least you can make out the shape here.

I would have loved to go down to the gorge to compare water levels to last time, but I was already running later than I wanted to be.  I left home mostly on time for what I had been planning, but I realized I sort of underestimated how much longer my hike would be than normal walking since I would be taking pictures and appreciating the view.  I could have rushed it at home but after Jacob's appointments I had to finish packing and make some lunch, and I knew Craig was stopping home so I didn't rush out so I could see him.  But then I realized en route that with two stops it might make me later than I planned, so I had to move on and vow to come back another day.  On to Buttermilk further down the road!

Buttermilk ended up pretty incredible.  I wasn't too sure early on because the big waterfall at the base of the gorge trail was barely a trickle as well.  It was a far cry from some of the pictures I had seen before.  The view over the bottom area was still pretty nice.

Crossing a bridge at the bottom of the gorge, from the parking area to the trail.

The waterfall was a bit lackluster...

Looking back down at the base

But as I climbed further up the stairs, it became apparent this would not disappoint.  It was one waterfall after another, after another, and because these were smaller, the water was more concentrated, which meant they were a bit more impressive than the big one.  

Looking back from a bit higher up

The sky above was so blue and even though the foliage hadn't changed much, it still felt pleasantly fall-like.  Looking just off the path I happened to notice this leaf that had perfectly fallen to rest on some stems and the sun was shining through at just the right angle to illuminate it.

This cave-like area was so cool.

It just kept going, winding and twisting through.

Every scene was more beautiful than the last.

Just when I thought it couldn't get cooler, some of the waterfalls had these deep plunge pools beneath them, much like I mostly remember seeing at Watkins Glen.  They were deeper so the water looked blue-green in them, as opposed to the shallower areas where the water was clear and showed the brown rock.  It was so pretty.  

The bridges always add a certain something.

This spot was pretty cool.  The tiered waterfall, a drippy ledge off to the right, and some peeks of the sun as I got closer to the top of the gorge.

Another pool!

This giant rock structure was so interesting.  It was just a single pillar.  I suppose once upon a time maybe it was connected to the gorge wall somehow?  

At the end of the gorge trail, which involved a LOT of stairs and kept my heart rate up almost the whole time, I had to cross a bridge on a main road to head to the rim trail.  The rim trail started out as a nice walk, a very pretty shaded stroll.  I found some fun fungi along the way.  

I was a little disappointed that there were nearly no views of the gorge from there, but it was still a nice path.  As it went on, though, it got steeper and harder to navigate.  It was so sloped in parts that my toes were shoving up into the front of my sneakers and it got uncomfortable.  I wasn't too concerned with falling or anything (although if it was muddier I would have been), but it was definitely a less enjoyable walk down.  

Is pink a fall color?  This felt like pink.

I got back in the car and started my last leg to Endicott, where Heather lives now.  They moved earlier in the summer to a lovely new house that had more room for their family, including her mom who moved to Binghamton a couple years ago to help with Mason.  It just made financial and logical sense for her to move in when the new house had space for her.  I was so excited to see them all and see the house.  I got through Ithaca, and waved to the world's most obnoxious Taco Bell where we had the infamous long wait behind the guy in mushroom gear when we were offered a ridiculous number of waters.  Ithaca is always a little busy and stressful, mostly because of Cornell, and I finally got through and out to the country roads.  And that's when things went a wee bit off course.

To be honest, I'm not even really sure how it happened.  There was a little hill in the road, and shortly after there was a backup of a few cars where one was waiting to turn.  I must have crested the hill, looked away for half a second (not my phone, I swear) and immediately there was a car right there...and I hit it.  Dammit.  That was the most sickening, horrible, is-this-really-happening feeling ever.  I don't want to dwell on this, so here are the highlights:

• The guy I hit was a very nice, calm college student on his way home to New Jersey.  He was very sweet about everything.  His car had some bumper damage, maybe into the wheel well.  It ended up being driveable.
• My car did not fare as well.  It completely exploded the front passenger headlight and crunched up the hood, front grill and passenger side bumper.  It looked worse than it felt.  The trooper thought it was driveable because it wasn't leaking or rubbing but maybe it would have been OK for five minutes, not hours.
• The trooper took forever to get there.  Should have been a sign.  Thankfully I did not get ticketed.
  
• The insurance company set me up for a tow, which after a lot of agonizing I decided to have done back to Rochester.  It was a little outside the radius, but what choice did I have?  I knew where I wanted it fixed so I just had it go back there.
  
• No one seemed to be picking up the tow job, even hours later, so I spent a lot of the next few hours on the side of the road as it was getting dark calling the company to see if I could get an update, during which I figured out they had the start and destination addresses wrong...twice.  I don't know that I've ever spent that much time on hold.  It was extremely frustrating, especially as my phone battery was going down and I wasn't entirely sure how long my car battery would last.
  
• By the time Heather and Peter got there to pick me up, there was still no tow update so I set one up through AAA to the closest garage where the car could at least wait for the final tow back to the collision shop in Rochester.  That took about 40 minutes, at which point the driver told me there's pretty much only one truck on in Ithaca on weekends at any given time, which didn't give me much hope for the Rochester tow.  I was worried because the car had to be left at the shop unlocked with the key under the mat because I had no idea when the next tow truck would get there.  It couldn't go in the drop box because that wouldn't be open until Monday.  I emptied everything out of it so there wasn't really much to steal, but it was stressful in this age of joyriding.  I figured if anything happened I should put it back on the insurance company's crappy setup for finding tow trucks.
  
• Overall it was a pretty miserable four hours on the side of the road, but thankfully I never had to pee and hunger wasn't overwhelming.  I was probably calmer than I expected all things considered, but I was pretty much dying inside.  It was just stressful being SO mad at myself and worrying about the tow and the car and how much I was inconveniencing everyone else and possibly ruining the weekend.  In all the back and forth with Heather and Craig, I got all parties to agree to meet somewhere in the middle on Sunday to get me home.  At least it seemed like we could make a weekend of it, and I guess it was good to have a distraction.
  

We made it back to Heather's probably a little after 9:30.  Mason refused to go to bed until I got there, so he was very happy to see me and give me the house tour.  He went down pretty good after that.  Heather and I stayed up chatting, and somewhere around 11pm I got a text that my car was getting picked up by the same company that picked it up from the road.  Knowing that drivers were scarce, I was a bit confused.  I thought maybe they were taking it back to their own lot or something so it would at least be secure--that after hearing my story, maybe the guy had pity on me and decided to keep it safe for the weekend until he could take it back to Rochester at a better time.  But the next time I checked the tracker, I realized it was up near Cortland, which was way north of us.  That was when I realized it actually was going back to Rochester right then and there!  I'm not sure how it happened but it did.  Unfortunately I'll probably get dinged for quite a few more overage miles because of that route, but that was the quickest and safest route for a truck like that, so I understand it.  Funny story--I got a cell phone call during dinner on Monday from another tow truck driver from the same company who was looking for me on that route!  I didn't get any further notifications that someone had been dispatched (again), but apparently it was somehow still stuck in their system.  I guess that was probably good news he didn't need to go all the way to Rochester (apparently he just came back from here), but I felt bad that he'd been looking for me.  Anyway, it took me forever to get to sleep Friday night just replaying the entire mess in my head, but once I did I slept pretty well, though it wasn't really long enough at that point.

One other bummer to the weekend was the revelation that Heather's mom has bone cancer.  It's one that doesn't necessarily have a cure but hopes to put her into remission long-term.  She is 80, so I suppose that's a little different than someone much younger, but at least the chemo side effects don't seem as taxing as some.  It's still pretty crushing, because her mom is seriously one of the best humans I know.  She doesn't act her age at all, so it's very easy to forget how old she is.  She's been through so much in her life and yet is so strong and so positive.  She felt bad because she came to live with them to help with Mason and this will make that hard, but now it's good she's there because they can help her.  It was all meant to be.  I'm hopeful things will go well, but that was definitely not good news.

Otherwise, Saturday was a nice day.  We started out with some French toast, and then we spent some time playing before going outside to check out the lovely hillside view and giving Mason some playtime.  I took this weird but cool picture of Mason and his Grammy.  I wish it would have focused on them, but bubbles pop quickly and kids move fast, so this was the best I could get.  And then it was time for lunch, so the opportunity had passed!

After lunch we went to a pumpkin patch!  It was a nice mid-sized one, lots of activities but not overwhelmingly large.  It had a lot of good stuff for little kids like Mason, like inflatables, a straw crawl, a corn box, a little train, and lots of things to see.  It also had bigger kid stuff like zip lines and a cool playground area with stand-up swings, hamster wheels, and a little go-kart type track.  There was a speed pitch, pumpkin painting, snacks and a gift shop, as well as a hayride.

Pirate ship slide!

I'm not sure what Mason liked more, this cart of skeletons, or the inflatables where he spent a good chunk of the day--he loved both a slide and a bounce house.

They had a bunch of pumpkin people, including these Peanuts people.

Mason also loved the corn box and the straw crawl.  He said the straw crawl was like Chutes and Ladders because they had slides off some of the hay bales.  He played in the corn and with a small inflatable slide for quite a while.

He took a little train ride, which he said gave him a headache because it was bumpy.

They also had a bunch of hay bale sculptures.  A lot were animals...

...but this one cracked me up.

During Mason's last run in the bounce house, he bounced himself out of the house and landed on his mouth, causing it to bleed.  I forgot how much I hate mouth injuries because you can never tell where the blood is coming from!  He cried for a minute and we wiped him up a bit, and then he was right back at it, of course!

We grabbed a snack since we suspected Mason might need a second wind, and then we headed off to the hayride.  It was nice and not too bumpy, and we went past this gorgeous field of sunflowers.

We then exchanged Mason photos!

Somehow he did not fall asleep on the way home (thank you, kettle corn), and we spent a good chunk of the rest of the day waiting for the big crash!  He wasn't too interested in dinner, but otherwise, he survived until bedtime!  

I haven't even gotten into my time with him.  He was so happy to see me and I got a lot of hugs and "I love yous" over the course of the weekend.  Toddlers can be so great like that.  I am definitely getting too old for the random, sudden tantrums (ha) but overall he's a really good kid.  And holy cow, SO smart!  He has a brain that is all sponge, apparently, but it is nurtured by good parents and diligent babysitters.  For example, he's not even four and is super into the periodic table of elements.  He knows their names and knows how to set up the table with a pack of flashcards he has.  In true toddler fashion he got bored with it before he was done, but what he did do was incredible.  He's also really into maps.  He loves Google Maps and knows all the streets.  He's a human GPS in the car.  He knows where the car is, what street you're on and what intersection you're at.  He has a bunch of homemade street signs at home (play-doh, straws, and paper signs) that represent their town's intersections.  He's also really into countries.  He knows flags and where almost every country is (maybe he knows them all, because I didn't see him miss pointing out one on his bedroom rug that's a world map--he was spot on when Heather mentioned I went to the Dominican Republic!).  It was incredible to see him do all these things all weekend.  I brought along a set of sight word flashcards, and he knew almost all of them already!  Even if he didn't know the word, he got close.  It got a little more complex with the sample sentences on the back of them, so maybe those will be helpful, but he's way ahead of the curve there!

We once again enjoyed our time chatting and playing for the rest of the day.  I had brought a toy and a book from my stash of the boys' stuff.  He had fun putting the sports uniforms on the Melissa and Doug magnetic guy, Jack, and he liked being tickled as we read the Tickle Monster book.  Later in the day I got the report from the boys after Carter's baseball game.  He actually made his pitching debut, which sadly wasn't as successful as we hoped, but also not really any worse than most of the previous week's pitchers.  I also got texted a picture of my car (and Carter) "saying hi" because the boys stopped at the collision place to see it.  Lovely.  That night I once again didn't sleep as well as I wanted to, but it was better.  

Sunday morning we woke up to crazy fog and temperatures in the 40s.  Luckily it warmed up by the time we walked back out of church, because my dress was picked out for 70 degree temps later in the day and felt a bit out of season before that!  Mason got a little antsy as church started, wanting to play and have a snack, but sometime during the first song or two he wanted me to pick him up.  I held him, and he seemed pretty content.  Well, I don't know if my habitual mom swaying/rocking did it, but before we knew it, I could feel him being much heavier, and sure enough, he was OUT.  I guess it was a much more exciting weekend than usual and that was his moment to catch up!  He slept on me almost the entire service, right up until we were up at communion.  He was a much happier boy after that, especially because they had cookies!

We had pizza and wings for lunch from their favorite local place (all very good) as the Bills' game was starting.  That game was a bust, unfortunately, but luckily we saw the comeback part of the game and missed the last second loss part because we were on our way to Corning by then.  We headed out mid-afternoon to meet Craig there to make the big exchange.  It was a little over an hour for them, and about 1:40 for Craig.  I figured that was the same as going to his parents', so he was used to it.  It was bittersweet leaving, and Mason cried big tears when I was saying goodbye.  Luckily they found a nearby playground and did McDonald's on their way home, which helped!  We ran into a doozy of a thunderstorm just as we got back to Greece, but saw some pretty good lightning along the way.  Anyway, it had been a really great weekend despite the circumstances, and I was thankful for the opportunity.

It's obviously been a little rough getting back home and facing the music.  I had to wait an extra day to get the rental car, and the estimate for my car is pretty high for an older car so I'm nervous it will get totaled.  That stinks, because the replacement value is so much higher than it used to be and most used cars I see anywhere are way higher than the blue book value seems to indicate, so the whole system seems way more annoying than it was last time.  We'll see.  Mentally I'm struggling a bit.  I don't really want to drive because I don't trust myself now.  I try so hard to be a good driver and pay attention, not be on my phone and all that, and yet one off moment led to this.  I know that I drive a lot, all things considered, and things just happen.  I know the odds are still slim, but four accidents now is pretty bad and I'm starting to question what I'm doing wrong.  I'm just really discouraged about the whole thing.  I'm dreading the rental car for the next couple weeks and even more worried if I have to go through the car buying process and adjust to a new one again (and, as a side note, that will mean starting the endless, dreaded process of converting my CDs as most cars don't have CD players anymore).  

But, at the same time, I've been spending more than a week watching utter devastation down south, from the Gulf Coast of Florida up through North Carolina where my aunt and uncle are.  The loss of life and property is crushing.  Entire towns have been wiped off the map.  And now another massive hurricane is hitting the same area of Florida later this week.  The same areas that had started to recover are doomed again, this time with lots of debris still sitting out in the streets to be floating obstacles and wind projectiles.  It's terrifying.  Disney is closing, too, as it's going to get a pretty direct hit.  Craig's cousin, our flower girl, was supposed to be there with her family this week, so that was sad that they had to postpone for almost six months.  I can't even imagine everything that those folks down south are dealing with, so it makes my little car problem look not so bad.  And truly, I was pretty lucky--I wasn't hurt, the other person wasn't hurt, it was just the two cars, and the other one wasn't as bad.  I had good luck with the tow truck (in the end) and good friend support to not only get to my destination, but also have a really great weekend and also get me halfway home.  And of course I have a good husband to come get me and not give me any grief about it.  I'm not excited about the financial prospects of it all, but it's not going to devastate us.  It'll be a sizable hit--one scenario bigger than the other--but we'll be okay.  So how much can I really pity myself?  The mental toll is something I have to deal with, but in the end I'm so fortunate.  But I'm also oddly bummed that my amazing hike on Friday and what was otherwise a lovely weekend with wonderful people feels a bit dragged down by one stupid mistake.  I love those gorge pictures, but I'm not sure I can put one on my phone because the constant reminder of what happened right after sucks.  It took me a day to even look at my pictures and a couple days to post about the weekend on social media (in part because I needed to tell my parents first and that took an extra day), just because I didn't want to think about what happened.  It just weighs heavily and I'm so tired of being weighed down, you know?  UGH.