When it Rains…

it pours, right? I just got home from a crazy long day, mostly a good one until about 7PM. Today my mom and I left at the crack of dawn for a 3 hour drive to the Raw Health Expo.

I had such a great experience last year, that I wanted to attend some of the more advanced sessions this year.

I made it to both of Cherie Soria’s sessions and really enjoyed Heather Haxo-Phillips session on fermenting. But a full re-cap will be coming tomorrow, I promise! I need to sort through a lot of chicken scratched notes and pictures first which isn’t happening tonight after so much fun the last few hours.

Driving home from the event, we decided to stop in Sacramento for dinner on the river at Chevys, the weather was perfect from outdoor eating while checking out all the boats.Yeah, Chevys is a chain and really this particular location is more popular for the location and waterfront dining than the food.

I started the meal out with a watermelon margarita.

Then ordered veganized fajitas that were pretty good, a lot of seasonal veggies for a chain restaurant, the grilled mushroom strips were especially good.

Right as we were getting ready to leave, the fun started. My dog and my mom’s dog were at home with hubby and since my dog is a rescue with some, uh, emotional issues, she can spook easily. Something happened while he was trying to put both dogs on a leash for a walk that caused my dog to go tearing out the front door without a leash and disappear. Not the first time this has happened, but my poor hubby called me panicked that he couldn’t find her in our neighborhood and at the worst time around dusk with coyotes and owls around. So we head to my mom’s car to rush home and … it won’t start. The dash lights were coming on, but no action from the engine. After several attempts, I’m panicking thinking it was the starter.

Thankfully she has AAA and I had plenty of cell phone battery left. I called and a tow truck was to us 20 minutes later, during that time some nice garage security guards were trying to help us. Turns out the battery corroded ruining one of the battery connectors, so the car wasn’t getting enough power to actually start the engine. That also meant it didn’t need to be towed, they were able to fix it on site and 30 minutes later we were back on the road to head back to my house.

As we approached my subdivision, I jumped out of the car with my flashlight to walk the rest of the way in while screaming her name at the top of my lungs. After 15 minutes of walking and yelling … and my neighbors thinking I was loony, a very panicked little chihuahua crashed into my legs crying and thankfully unhurt.

Sigh, little butthead. But all ended well after a few hours of stress and chaos. Lessons learned:

• AAA is a good thing to have.
• Check you car batter regularly – I’m going to check mine now … or tomorrow.
• Always carry a good flashlight. I had one in my purse that came in handy for the car repair and dog hunting.

I didn’t panic too much during the mess, I was able to keep things professional, calm, and collected dealing with AAA, tow-truck drivers, and safely driving home not worrying about my dog too much. Actually I was more worried about my hubby knowing he was stressing trying to find her. Not that many years ago I probably would have been a stressed out mess with such events, but I kept reminding myself this is no one’s fault, things are happening as fast as they can, and they’ll work out. Thankfully they did.

So huge re-cap of the Raw Health Expo tomorrow, tonight a bubble bath.