So it’s not exactly fortune cookie material…
Count your blessings, because in the blink of an eye you could be ankle deep in your own poo!
All right, I admit it wasn’t really ankle deep, but there was definitely poo involved. It was definitely a crappy thing to have happen!
This past weekend we had a not so welcome gift from the sewage fairy. Some roots from the tree outside our house got into our sewer line. Our basement went from 0 to a lovely spread of muck on the floor on one side in a few hours. I just happened to go downstairs for a loaf of bread and ended up playing a game of stepping stones to get to the freezer. I more or less had to sit IN the freezer to get the bread out, and I hollered to Evil Genius to come look at the basement.
The next morning we had a quick visit from the city guy who simply said “Yup, you’re backed up.” This was followed by waiting a few hours for our local Roto-Rooter guy to come out and snake the drain.
Yeah, this tree. I like this tree… I’m sad about it. It’s going to have to come down.
And by the way, he didn’t have to do it once. Or twice. He had to run it FOUR times.
Lucky us!
Incidentally, I have discovered what the worst smell in the world is. If you have kids, take their worst diaper or poop accident and multiply the smell by 1000. That is the smell that will linger after Roto-Rooter has left your house. I started smelling it about the time he was finished, and then he brought the weird drum shaped device through the upstairs he stopped and showed me the sewage covered tree roots. I just about threw up, it smelled that bad. And remember, that stuff doesn’t usually bother me. That means it was really, really bad.
As he often is, Evil Genius was amazing. He came home from work while I was at my job and cleaned it all up. By the time I came home my house was transformed from stinky mess to a lovely Lysol smell. And I like the smell of that particular cleaner, so that’s quite all right.
Confession time: I have to admit when it happened I went a little nuts. I worried and I cried. Because that’s what I do. Having to shell out a large chunk of change ten days before Christmas when you’re not exactly rolling in the dough makes your wallet hurt. Add to that fact that I had just had my hair colored for the first time in many years the Friday before. It was my Christmas gift from my husband. While I loved how it looked and it wasn’t terribly expensive, the guilt of spending that money on myself instead of my kids just about killed me.
Moms do that. We put our family first. So it’s a natural mom reaction to feel bad in these situations. Even though no one was dying and nothing really terrible was going to come of it, I still felt bad.
And I continued to feel bad about it. I was so preoccupied that I ran into the side of the cart corral at Target. While the car was fine other than a few scratches in the paint, my already wounded pride was aching. And then I burst into tears in the store, because here I was surrounded by all of the things I would like to get for my kids, but couldn’t at the moment. Not that my kids NEED anything, because they have plenty of toys.
So then I felt bad for feeling bad. After all, we still had a house, food in our kitchen, heat, running water, clothing, and so forth. Why was I fretting over the fact that we might have to postpone Christmas? They would be spending time with their extended family and would get gifts from their grandparents the weekend before.
I guess because I don’t want my kids to know just yet that sometimes life just really sucks.
And we’ve had it worse. Much, much worse. Three years ago we had a flood. During this flood our sewer system got overwhelmed and backed up. And kept backing up-all the way up our basement stairs. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. My husband was at work and couldn’t leave, and I thought we were going to float right out of our house. We lost our furnace and thought we’d lost our freezer, which was floating around in the basement.
Weeks later miraculously our freezer came back to life. And we got a new furnace through a local organization who happened to be helping winterize our house at the time.
I also have to keep in mind that this is the first Christmas in a long time that one of us hasn’t been out of work or in school. My husband is working a job that while the commute is long and some aspects of it are stressful, he is doing what he loves at a company that is very supportive and truly appreciates him as an employee. We have good health insurance. We have great benefits.
So what the hell am I upset about? Counting my blessings makes even the worst situation seem a lot better.
Speaking of blessings, I want to thank my blogging friends who had kind words to offer me as I was fretting about the whole thing. It really meant the world just to hear that things will get better! Sometimes it’s nice just to have someone listen. We don’t need any help, we will be fine! It’s just another setback in a series of things that are getting better slowly but not quite fast enough to make me happy. I just have to remember that sometimes it’s one step forward and two steps back!
Oh, and by the way, I’ve got about a thousand crap references saved up since this whole mess started. I bet you can’t wait!
Now before you go away thinking “Sheesh, I thought this lady is supposed to be funny!” I want you to remember that even the funniest people have unfunny days. But you can get your laugh on over at Moms Who Write and Blog, where they have a little shindig going on known as Mom For the Holidays! You can read many great posts (but not ghosts) from Christmases pasts!
And to go right along with that, tomorrow is Fly on the Wall, The Holiday Edition, going live at 10 am EST/9 am CST!
The Sadder But Wiser Girl 