....When You Least Expect It......

Expect it.  Isn't that the old fashioned advice?  Pure gold, as usual.

The many days of Thanksgiving were over, everyone had gone back home, the house was still relatively clean, and I was sound asleep in bed thinking I was "ready" to get back to work and get the boys back on a normal schedule with school.

Suddenly, I hear the shower start, which is normal, as my Oldest Baby takes his shower at night.  I registered the sound somewhere in my mind.....and it seemed somewhat louder than usual.  I was in that heavy sleep that you go into about an hour after you go to bed, and I pushed the wondering away, for about 9 seconds.

Next I heard cries for help coming from the bathroom.  This is not usual, and the shower still sounded really loud.

I hear my Youngest Baby rumbling up the steps and going into the bathroom, presumably to "help" his brother.  The next thing I heard was bickering between the two of them as to how the other one is doing things wrong, and still the water is running like crazy!  By now I am no longer in any kind of sleep.  Instead I am tearing myself from my warm, soft, quiet, heavenly bed and trying to make it to the door without killing myself.  It sounds like a freight train is in the bathroom, possibly running over at least one of my children, maybe both!  

I stumble into the bathroom and the scene that greeted me was, well it was crazy, but nothing you want to get up out of your deepest sleep for.

Water was shooting out of a hole where the hot water knob used to be and both boys are trying to stop it, one fully clothed, and the other one bent over double in the shower.  I ask what happened and they both start yelling at the same time, not because they were mad, but because they had to yell over the sound of the water shooting out of the hole like a fire hose (!) and hitting the back wall of the shower when it's not hitting my naked Oldest Baby and then splashing all over the bathroom.  He pivots toward me to yell his version of the story and I notice that he is still bent over double, and at this point it dawns on me that yes, he is naked, but he also 14 and in the "MY MOTHER MUST NOT SEE ME NAKED OR THE WORLD WILL END" stage, and so I dive for the hole and tell the boys to go turn off the water to the house.  They both leave.  To do what, I do not know because now it occurs to me that they don't know where the turn off to the water is.  I yell for help.  Water continues to shoot mostly down my arms and between the walls to the downstairs bathroom.  I must say, my bathroom floors have probably never been quite THIS clean before.....

And then I throw caution to the wind, throw the shower curtain as shut as I can get it as fast as I can, ( I am not at my best at 11:30 pm after an hour and a half of sleep, I freely admit) and run as fast as I can downstairs to turn off the water.

The silence was as welcome as it was deafening.

I drag myself back upstairs to find the twins looking for tools.  Yes, I laughed too.  In fact, I laughed for about 20 minutes solid, once my legs stopped shaking and I could be trusted to stomp on towels all over both bathroom floors.

Then I start wondering who to call about this.  Thank God for one of my Angels, who was even up at midnight.  AND returned my call.  If you do not have this worked out already, you need to make a list in your head of people you can call at midnight who will not only answer the phone but will answer the call!  This list should be added to periodically, I would say at least every 5 years, because as the years go by the list gets shorter;  people die, and the ones who don't get old too.  Don't let that happen.  You will pay for it in the end, or maybe sooner, and I can guarantee it will not happen at a convenient time.  We must be vigilant.

The next morning I scooped water out of the back of one of the stools, boiled it, and set up a little station by the kitchen sink.  We washed our hair (sort of), our faces, and brushed our teeth.  We felt like pioneers.  Or prison inmates.  Prison inmates and at privately run prison, not those fancy places that have the computers and spa days.  You get the picture.

So, this was Monday after a week's vacation.

It was quite a week.

Going back to work was a piece of cake, if you know what I mean. 

Thanksgiving

Due to the kid's being gone today, I have been able to spend the morning lazing around with the Rock Star and the Beautiful Redhead.

Instead of peeling potatoes and checking on the turkey, we threw a chicken in the crock pot and assembled an enchilada casserole for later.  Maybe tomorrow.

My house is clean thanks to a week of "vacation" spent cleaning.  I have discovered that I hate dusting more than anything.  Whether that is due to it not being "important" enough to me or to the incredible amount of dust that my house seems to constantly recycle, I do not know.  What I do know is that in putting off dusting the other day, I decided to instead apply more rubber cement to the pane of glass that has been rattling in my front door.

During this exercise, it occurred to me that the Rock Star was coming home and would like nothing better than to help his mother with this project.  Stupidly, and in true Melinda form, I decided to just "press on".

Well, the good new is that I no longer have a pane of glass rattling in my front door.  

The bad news is that I have no pane of glass in my front door.

I plasticised over both the inside and the outside of the hole where the pane should be, ordered more glass that won't be here until next week, and still had to dust.

I bit the bullet and got the rest of the house clean.  I had to.  And do you know the twins didn't even notice there was no glass in the door?  Gotta love those boys, huh?  I mean, as long as there is food, nothing else really matters or even registers with them.  It used to drive me crazy as a "girl", but as a mother I count on it.  I have even become comfortable with it.  So comfortable, in fact, I have come to rely on it, and do you know, it seems better this way.

Anyway, with all that cleaning done, it left yesterday free to watch Gone With The Wind several times, as it was on continuous loop on AMC yesterday.  

I must confess, watching Scarlett always makes me feel better about who I am.  Also, I don't really get why Clark Gable was considered so good looking.  I guess maybe you had to be there.  But in the end, when he tells her he doesn't give a damn?  It really doesn't get any better than that.  It is kind of sad because she isn't a completely terrible person, and at that point, she could actually be kind of a good person, but of course by then, it 's too late.  Just like life.  Karma gets Scarlett too, and boy does she ever have it coming.

I think my favorite line/scene in that movie is where Scarlett is trying to get Mammy to pull her corset tight enough to make her waist 18 1/2 inches.  Again.  Mammy says "Now, Mz Scahlet, you done gone and had a baby.  You ain't nevah gone be 18 1/2 inches again, and there ain't nothing you can do about it."

That is the truth.  And furthermore, ain't nothin in this world where an 18 1/2 inch waist is gone help with, honey.  Lay that down and forget about it.  Plenty of more important things to worry about right in front of you.

I am no Scarlett, thanks be to God, but she wasn't all bad.  In fact, if she could have gotten the Southern  Lady thing out of her mind, she could have.....well, what couldn't she have done?

She is just the kind to have had enchiladas instead of turkey if she felt like.  We all need enough selfishness to do what makes us happy, regardless of what anybody thinks about it.

Embrace your self involvement, women, just don't let it take over your good sense.  Realizing what is really important is positively liberating, no bra burning needed.

In the end, I promise you the world won't stop spinning.  I also promise you that turkey and stuffing do not actually make it onto people list of important things.  Nobody will remember what kind of stuffing you fixed.  They might remember if you burnt up the turkey, or burnt up the house if you are the turkey frying kind, but other than some horrible catastrophe, all they will remember is each other, and the funny things that happened that day.  It's all that's important.  You should find that a relief, especially if you are a woman.

I wish for you today to be thankful for all that you have, even if that includes turkey.  But I hope that you have so much turkey comes so far down on the list that it doesn't even matter.

Don't be a Scarlett, never able to see what's right in front of you before it's too late.  Live every moment to it's fullest and don't worry about the mess.  It will be there when you are ready to clean it up.  I promise you that, too.

Speaking of Hot Toddies.....

This might be a God wink.  

No sooner did I mention Hot Toddies and confess that I didn't even know what one was, than an article appeared before my eyes.

If you can stand the taste of alcohol, here are a few recipes for your perusal.  Even if you can't stand the taste of alcohol, I often find that when one has a bad cold or the flu, it's a sacrifice worth making.  You can't really taste it anyway and it certainly does not taste any worse than some of the over-the-counter remedies I have spent money on.

They didn't say it had medicinal purposes for nothing, you know.

Enjoy!

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2011/11/09/hot-toddies-cold-nights/?test=faces