Thursday, July 13, 2017

The Tale of Two Messes

Disclaimer: I don't believe in psychics. I mean, I guess I do in the sense that I believe we can screw around with demons and stuff and get really messed up in all kinds of evil. But I don't believe in them in the traditional way that people do. I definitely don't believe in my own ability to have psychic premonitions.

Yesterday I had a psychic premonition. Except I did not because, as stated before, I don't believe in that. I do believe in the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Maybe, even, on really silly stuff. Like checking the outside freezer.

We're leaving for Tahoe tomorrow. I'm really glad that I had this strange premonition yesterday and not a week from now. I was backing up my car so that I could get to a cooler to take with us when I had the sudden and overwhelming thought that I needed to check my freezer. This was followed by the thought, "Well. If it isn't working, it's going straight back to Costco because we have not had it for very long!" I walked toward it and opened it. Cold air blasted me and I thought, "Oh good." This was immediately followed by my wondering aloud why the bottom of the freezer was red. And wet.

I don't know how long it wasn't working but it couldn't have been terribly long because the ice cream still had a partially frozen blob in the center. I was incredibly thankful that I had some ice frozen in there which had served, for a time, as a cooling device. The popsicles were everywhere. And no longer chilling in their popsicle formation.

I hauled everything out of there. I threw things away. I mopped up sticky juice. I cleaned everything up. Not once did I lose my cool even though I had 99 better things to do. And even though it was approximately 2,000 degrees in my garage. I was so happy for my strange idea that I needed to look inside the freezer. Praise God! At some point in all of this, I'd needed the scissors for something. I can't remember what.

I continued on with my day.

Later, I decided to get my spare key. It wasn't hanging where it usually does (correction: it WAS hanging where it usually does but I failed to see it there) so I started looking in places we've hid it before. That led me to a water toy that I thought would be fun to turn on for the boys. I needed scissors to free it from it's cardboard prison. "Where are the scissors?" I wondered aloud before remembering that they were in the garage. As I walked past the laundry room on my way to the garage, I saw it.

My entire laundry room and bathroom floor were covered in standing water. It was seeping into the carpet. I threw open the lid to the washing machine and the basin was full to the brim with soapy water. And that is the moment that I chose to start crying dramatically.

It was ridiculous. It was a cross between actual crying because I was upset and frustrated and theatrical crying because I did not feel like cleaning it up and if I cried loud enough then maybe the universe would hear me and come do it for me. This crying is reserved for things like minor floods and head lice. My boys stared at me.

"What should I do?" Garrett asked? I had no idea what to tell him because I had no idea where to start. He called Troy who did not answer. This is really quite common, When my husband DOES answer, I am genuinely surprised. I'm not sure why we pay for his phone. I didn't know what to even do but I wanted someone to feel sorry for me so I called my parents.

Meanwhile, I'd sent Garrett for towels. He returned with ONE dishcloth. To clean an entire floor of standing water. Good luck, kid. My dad told me to see if I could manually get the washer to engage in a spin cycle. I could. Praise God! Because I did not want to bail an entire basin full of soapy water. Within a few minutes, Troy came home.

Y'all, I was GEARED up. I am not typically a crier, as has been largely documented here. But I am dramatic. I will immediately think that my cough is lung cancer or my flooded washing machine is THE END OF THE WORLD. (Especially when I have somewhere to go. And where I needed to go was Vacation Bible School in two hours to do a skit which I did not have memorized yet. I also needed to go on actual vacation.) Troy came in and I was all high pitched and incoherent. He just looked at that DISASTER and calmly said, "Oh wow." Then he set to cleaning it up.

I decided to run a load and watch every step so that I could tell a repair man exactly where it went wrong. Strangely, the cycle went perfectly. More strangely, we have since done three loads of laundry without a problem. PRAISE GOD! I'm not assuming it's cured. I'm just thankful for the temporary calm before the storm of needing to shell out big bucks for a new one.

Guess who slept through the freezer fiasco? Guess who slept through half of the laundry room fiasco? That's right, the inquisitive man cub who would have found both messes to be thoroughly enjoyable adventures. PRAISE GOD! Because I would not have found it enjoyable when he went running through the neighborhood with all the temporarily relocated freezer food. And I would not have found it enjoyable when he began swimming lessons on my bathroom floor.

The point of this tale is not that I cleaned up two giant messes when I needed to be packing. The point is that while my reaction was to CRY on the phone with my MOMMY and my DADDY, my husband's reaction was basically a quiet, "Good times."

WHAT IF I HAD MARRIED MYSELF? (I mean, someone like myself.) That would have been the greatest disaster of all. Both of us standing, immobilized, in the bathroom, crying. Both of us calling our daddies? Thank goodness God brought that calming presence into my overdramatic life.

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