How we are keeping the water company in business

(Only a fraction of the towels employed tonight)

Remember how I told you I was going to give Hubs the same Valentine's Day present this year as I did last year? I'll save you the trouble of looking it up; it was a clean bedroom. And to refresh your memory further, a thorough declutter and cleaning of my bedroom is yes indeedy a good present, given that my biggest weakness as a homemaker is keeping house. Anyway, the days leading up to Feb. 14th were full of rain here where we live, and lots of snow up in "the high country" as the local media refers to the mountainous regions of AZ. Hubs got the itch to go snowboarding, and I agreed that he should take advantage of the new snow and he only goes once every other year or so, plus I figured that him being gone all that day would allow me to work on my gift to him. He had a great time, boarded his guts out, and I felt like the best wife EVER.

While he was gone and I was working on the bedroom clean-up project, the downstairs toilet decided to overflow. Fortunately I was home, fortunately we have mostly tile downstairs, and fortunately it only took 6 large comforters and several beach towels to soak up all the water, which I then spent the rest of the day laundering. Awesome. But really, it could've been worse. (Due to the flood clean-up, the bedroom project did not get finished but I didn't feel too bad about that when I remembered that my man had just spent the whole day snowboarding. And we did go out for a very nice dinner the night before and he did bring me some Valentine's roses so it's not like there was no recognition of the holiday around here.)


So then tonight, Hubs and I were watching 24 after the kids went to bed, and hanging out with Juno when something strange happened. Juno looked right at me, walked over to Noah's backpack which was on the floor, squatted and peed on it. It was such a deliberate act... is she jealous of Noah? Trying to assert her place in the family? Just seeing how I would react? The little rascal! After giving Juno a little smack, a firm NO or two, and chucking her (gently-ish) outside, I remembered that I had washed Noah's backpack in the washing machine once before so I knew it would hold up, so I got a couple of dirty towels together with the backpack and started a wash cycle.


Several minutes later I poured myself a drink of water from my Brita pitcher and stepped in a puddle of water in front of the fridge. At first I assumed I had inadvertantly dumped out the whole pitcher onto the ground (stranger things have happened) but in a second's time I realized the actual source. The washing machine had decided to keep filling and filling beyond the selected load size and it wasn't stopping. Water was pouring out of my laundry room/pantry and making its way well into both my kitchen and dining room. Again, thank goodness for tile. But seriously? SERIOUSLY with the floods around here? Fortunately for me, Hubs did most of the soak-up work this time (with like every towel we own plus lots of wringing-out into the sink) while I experimented with the washing machine and then decided to make good use of all the wet towels by giving my entire downstairs a thorough mopping.


As I sat to type this tale, Hubs asked if I would run upstairs to tend to an apparently freaking-out child. It turned out to be Lucy, who was crying in her sleep and kicking her legs as if there were bugs crawling on them. She wasn't awake enough to tell me what was wrong but did vaguely indicate that it felt like something was on her foot or ankle or leg or knee or something. My inspection turned up nothing, so I figured it was the leg-asleep-and-just-woke-up tingles. I sat on her bed and held her on my lap and tried to calm her down, when suddenly she relaxed.

And I felt the warmth of her emptying bladder soaking through my jeans.


The good news:

I'm already in the middle of several loads of laundry (wet towels) so a few more soiled articles of clothing are no problem.

Lucy missed the bed entirely so I don't have to change her sheets.

She went right back to sleep.

We did get to finish tonight's episode of 24.

My case of Diet Dr. Pepper was not lost in the flood.



And I still love this job.