IT happens

For those of you who don't know ropin' lingo, I apologize and I will try to esplain this so's you understand. (It's okay, huh?)
I went down to Pocatello Thursday night to rope. I hauled Simba, Reed's pony, down in a two horse strait load trailer that I borrowed. He loads real nice into it and had no problems. I thought I would stop by and pick up Will, the horse I was to haul back to Iceburg, before heading to the roping. Will has never been in a strait load (the little old two-horse trailers that only poor college kids use), and I wanted him to see it in the day. He didn't want any part of loading in there. He put his front feet in and then freaked out, hit his head on the roof and he jerked back. Of course, I was holding the lead rope, and it zipped through my hand at a high rate of speed. Burned like a sunuvagunn. I said a few choice words about his parents and their marital status, and I tried again. This went on for about 15 minutes, all to no avail. The roping started at seven so I thought I had better get going.
Got to the roping, but dad wasn't there from Burley yet, so I watched what was going on, and got us entered. I roped pretty good in the first round, made it back with two fellas. I woulda made it back with three, but I missed my dallies with one guy and let the steer go. (The way a roping works, if it is a draw jackpot, most of the time, is that you enter like 5 times. So they pair you up with 5 other people. You rope in the first round with all 5. If you catch a steer in the first round, you get to rope in the second round with that same partner. If you catch the second you get to go on to the third. Last night's roping was a three steer average, so if you caught all three in good time, you'd get a check-money-).
The second round I missed for Harold and legged up (caught the steer by one leg -which adds 5 a five-second penalty-) for Gary. That meant I only got to come back to the third round with one guy, Gary. There were only 18 teams in the 3rd round and we were 12th. That might not sound good, but considering they were paying 5 places, I thought we had a decent chance. Well, the only way to get a check is to rope that last steer. I missed. Dadgumm. Dad missed with his partner as well, so no money for the Larsen Family. I'd like to say that was the worst part of my night, but that was only 8:45 pm, and I still had to load Will and head back to Rexburg.
When I got back in the truck I checked my phone for messages, but my screen wasn't working. That happens every now and then, so I thought I'd just turn it off and back on, to reset it. Nope, that didn't work. I flipped the phone out of my hands in disgust. Then I heard it snap in half. CRAP! Yeah, that'll cost me a Benjamin to replace.
Then to load Will was pretty much impossible. He would get close and then rear back and freak out. Not cool.
Friday was equally frustrating as I forgot to do some of my homework and I was deathly tired and sore from the night before.
On Saturday I was at home, sweet home, in Burley. Through use of the front end loader on the tractor I was gonna help Mom pick some fruits out of the tops of the trees. I filled the hydraulic resivour and fired up the tractor. I flipped the PTO switch to get the bucket moving. I was in the middle of raising the bucket and then I heard a WHOOSH. The supply hose from the resivoir to the hydraulic pump had come off and the fluid was promptly draining out, at a high rate of speed. Simple fix, sort of. I just put new hose clamps on and filled it back up with new fluid. The bad part was that the pump has supports to keep it from spinning around (since it's PTO driven), and the supports had broken off. That is what caused the hose to come off in the first place. Dad is going to have to fix that one, cause Saturday afternoon is not the time to do such things, least not when things are closed down.
I was then getting ready to go to Priesthood Session. Mom needed some trash hauled, so I took the burn barrel into town. When I got back I noticed I was leaking more radiator fluid than normal. Sure enough, I had a hole in my radiator hose. No P.S. for me. I had to change the hose before Sunday. Good times.
The point of all this is that sometimes things happen. Life ain't always beautiful, but its a beautiful ride. It ain't so bad. It could have been lots worse and a bigger bummer of a weekend. Probably the reason it wasn't too bad was twofold: 1)It was General Conference, and I learned a lot and 2)When somebody loves you, life ain't too bad at all. (I hope you had a Happy Birthday!) Yeah, it's okay.