Last Thursday was meant to be a busy but organized day. My husband and I were going to rise early, efficiently pack our 16-foot Oasis travel trailer and hit the road about noon for a 5-hour drive to Seattle. My daughter was graduating from the University of Washington-Tacoma at 10 on Friday morning. My husband and I had a plan. And by 8:30 Thursday morning, that plan was dead.

It started about 7:30 when we were in the backyard. Eeyore, our Basset hound, yelped and limped over to us, his right rear paw sticking straight out. Bassett hounds are known for back problems, so I thought he’d thrown his back out. Then my husband pointed out all of the blood on the ground. Sure enough, he had a cut on his right rear paw. We spent about 30 minutes trying to dress the wound, but we couldn’t get it to stop bleeding. Off to the vet we went.

The vet came into the exam room and after a quick look at the wound, he pronounced our dog needed stitches. “Let me get you an estimate.” And with those six words, the money we’d managed to squirrel away for this long-anticipated trip was gone. As for leaving at noon? Ha! Joke’s on us. We could pick our dog up after 2 p.m.

The hits just kept coming. I misplaced the keys to the car we intended to leave at home. Not a big deal, but it became a very big deal when my husband hooked the trailer up to the other car and with a burst of white smoke, the electrical system shorted out. Now, we had to find those keys. Thankfully, I had a spare key.

My friend and fellow writer, Cherise Marshall, agreed to stay at the house with our recovering hound while we attended the graduation. And sure enough, at 6 p.m. on Thursday night, we hit the highway. Only to find the highway closed. 

Construction crews are expanding I-90, and that requires they blow up a mountain. So, during the times when they blast, they close the highway. But not to worry. It was closed from 8 to 10 p.m., and we wouldn’t even be in that part of Washington by then. At 11 that night, when we finally drove across that section of I-90, we were treated to a site I had never seen before: huge blocks of rock, the size of our car, being carted away. The ground shook as they dumped the boulders into massive trailers.

Friday morning, sitting in the uppermost tier of seats in the Tacoma Dome, I watched my daughter graduate from college. Worth it!

Congratulations to my daughter, Megan Noel Hestir. University of Washington-Tacoma, class of 2013.