One must take advantage of
any opportunity to give
Filed under: Adventures, Everyday Blessings, family, Holidays, Recovery is Fun
I’m convinced that life doesn’t let you suffer too long, if you do your part: sleep, eat, be of service, have faith. Sunday brought to my house the best Valentine’s Day ever. You know, best day recovery style: full of love and giggles and predictable enough. We rode the train into the hills to visit a petting zoo. It had been a long time since, instead of writhing in anxiety, I could see and feel the beauty in such a day.
Best of all were my travelling companions. A fluffy haired moppet who danced in fountains and spun in her princess dress, and a gentle man whose tired eyes relaxed and smiled and enjoyed. Who could ask for more?
Remember this post ? My, but I can feel like the sky is falling sometimes. I so appreciate the emails and comments … the sky isn’t so threatening when you have people to commiserate with you about it.
But of course, the saga didn’t end there. Apparently tree roots have broken into the main sewer line, far away from the house in a corner of the yard (it’s a lovely tree, by the way, with purple and white flowers in spring, you’d never guess it was so lethal) and anything that uses water, including the washing machine and the dishwasher, stopped. Including our one and only toilet.
I’ll just say this: a reluctant-to-potty-train preschooler and bad plumbing DO NOT MIX.
So it was off to a hotel for us. Three nights in a hotel! It was a budget hotel, sure, but it had a tub I didn’t have to clean and beds I didn’t have to make and carpet I didn’t have to vacuum and TELEVISION. (I got to watch the GOLDEN GLOBES. Weren’t the dresses dreamy?)
We got ROOM SERVICE (the first night. We were too weary to deal with an equally weary Mimi in a restaurant. After that I brought food from home. Our room had a microwave!)
Clearly I am easy to excite, as I am now speaking in exclamation points.
We also solved a wrenching domestic mystery. We had the line snaked, something Jon had tried with a machine rented from Home Depot but it didn’t work when he did it. The plumber got it cleared, and what do you think popped out? Mim’s Little EInstein Annie doll. She’d disappeared last week after a fight with Little Einstein June, and I had assumed the worst. I predicted that she’d been confiscated by a dog in need of something to shred, or handed off to another child at preschool, or perhaps we would discover her one day deep under the couch … but given Mimi’s general attitude toward the toilet it should not have been a surprise that she met a watery end.
Annie was, sadly, not recoverable, and despite Mimi’s long neglect of the toy that looks a bit like her in favor of the ballet-dancing, tutu-twirling, vaguely exotic June, she was devastated. We were as surprised as she when the plumber emerged from the bathroom cradelling the muck-caked doll; we could only identify her by her red dress and one blue foot (she was missing the other foot and most of her head). The plumber handled her gently, and this assuaged Mimi’s grief a bit. That plumber is either super sensitive, or he has children; without knowing the toy’s story he automatically assumed the best tactic was to take care with Annie. And from Mimi’s tears one would never guess that she’d not asked after Annie once since her disappearance. So callow!
And more good news! We’d anticipated a horrible, horrible plumbing bill, and his bill was nowhere near what we’d feared. It wasn’t our first choice of how to spend $500, but it could have been thousands.
So now we are home. Everything appears to work. I’m getting caught up with laundry, on my way to pick up Mimi from preschool and take her to swimming lessons… life is good at the moment.
Oh, and did I mention I quit my job? I’ll write about that as soon as my fingers stop shaking every time I think about it.
