Bloggers From Pluto

I really enjoyed Joel's blog about finding contentment and humor in the middle of stress and hard times. It has been a couple of days like that. Yesterday I woke up early and put in a load of laundry. I went downstairs and got breakfast going, and heard a new "running water" sound upstairs. It took me a while to say "huh - that doesn't sound good" and it was finally Madison's shouts "mom, my bedroom carpet is all wet" to bring me out of my morning stupor. The water was pouring out of the bottom of the washing machine pan, and had already soaked part of Madison & Livi's rooms and the hallway. I shut of the water and we got out a million towels to soak up the water, then Garrett downstairs shouted "I'll get the pans" The ceiling had two huge "beehive bubbles", which Garrett punctured and the water came out like a waterfall from the second floor to the first floor. The positive -as we stood staring at the waterfall coming down, the kids laughed and thought it was very pretty. Another positive - I called USAA - the most wonderful insurance company on the planet, and they acted quickly. The water restoration people came within two hours - they cut two large holes in the ceiling, and put in five huge industrial strenth fans in which need to stay on for three days to dry everything out. The positive - these powerful fans have provided hours of play for the kids, and an aeronautical engineering demonstration from Rhett on unstable and stable air flows. Another positive - despite the large deductable we are paying, the carpet cleaners are cleaning most of the carpeting in the house, and our carpets need to be cleaned. Matt IM'ed Madison and when he heard the news at first, he started laughing, then she had to go. Then he desided to be "mature Matt",and call back to talk to me, offer his help, to offer his shop vac. Positive- Matt made a good impression.
So the washer is broken and the part is on order, so I went to the laundrymat with Cecily and about 150 lbs of laundry - a lot of wet towels. While I was doing the laundry, Cecily climbed onto a chair and fell on the concrete and hit her head badly. She made funny little sounds instead of crying, and looked dazed and sleepy. I told the owners I had to go, and took her to the ER. Good news, what is normally a long wait went very quickly because there was a doctor in triage - she is just fine - just a big bruise, and we were in and out in one hour. When I got back to the laundry mat, I found that the owners had put all my laundry in the dryers, and were folding it for me when I walked in. I offered to pay them, but they declined, just saying how grateful they were that the baby is okay. There are so many good people out there! I'm not being Pollyanna, there was just so much good, and so many people willing to help when things went a little haywire. I'm waiting for the contractors now - we're getting some new drywall and a new ceiling. That's a good thing. Thanks Joel!