The Weekend Went to Pot(ty)

I am learning balance of all things here. My days pretty much have a pattern - or at least they did last week. Who knows what'll happen this week. Looking backward, I have appointments in the morning (really, I had no idea we were such busy people), I work all afternoon until the kids come home, I make dinner, clean the house, take care of kids and dogs, shuffle some laundry, blah, blah, blah, put the boys to bed, and work until I'm too tired to sit upright. It's a lather, rinse, repeat, and for now it's working. (Don't bother throwing me a "welcome to the working world" party. I now know that we're all too busy to attend it.)

"But what about your other jobs?," you asked?  Good question. They fit in and around that schedule. Photo shoots get squeezed in during the "appointments in the morning" hours, and editing takes place during the weekend. Also on the weekend, I get to spend cathartic time in the sewing room. I had a large handful of shirts to make this weekend, and was on a mission to finish them all. I was on a roll, too, knocking them out at a steady clip and feeling quite proud of myself for the accomplishments. (Sam had Micah. Enough said.)

Because I have delegated more and more housework to the kids, Becky was in charge of sweeping and mopping while I finished up the last few shirts. I promised her a trip to the mall when I was done since we both had returns to make. We've had the returns for 3 weeks now. The good thing about me working is that I spend less.  Who has time to shop?

So I'm in the sewing room creating new things and having a grand old time doing it when I hear Becky say, "Mom?" It was the tone that made me drop everything and run down the stairs. I mean, with that tone there was most likely a dead dog. And possibly another dog gnarling on it's dead leg. Or maybe all the dogs contracted rabies and had her backed in a corner, except there was a distinct lack of sheer panic in that one word, so it was unlikely.

Turns out, the ceiling in the hallway was dripping.

So I ran back up the stairs to the master bath which is directly above the drippy ceiling, because I have mad deduction skills like that. Oh, people, I have never seen the like. You know how you see overflowing bathtubs on television shows, where the bathroom looks like a small lake, and little rubber duckies are floating in inch deep water the whole way across the floor, and the water is gushing out the door and into the rest of the house? Yeh, it wasn't like that. But only because we were missing the rubber duckies. They were sitting on the ledge of the bathtub surveying the damage.

We have three closets in our bathroom. I know it sounds weird, but let me explain. One is a linen closet, because it makes sense. The other two are in the "hallway" between the master bedroom and bath. You walk between my walk-in closet and the double-door hanging closet to get into the bathroom. Three closets, with an inch of water on the floor. I don't know about you, but we have stuff in our closets. We now have wet stuff in them.

The bedroom carpet wasn't as wet as you'd think it would be. Probably because it dripped straight down through instead of spreading across the floor. The joys, people. The joys. So Becky and I emptied two closets of towels, and raided the dirty laundry hampers for towels, and grabbed the dog towels, and then ended up poking through the boys' bedrooms for towels, and we still didn't have enough towels to sop up the mess. We soaked up water, wrung towels out into the tub, and soaked up more water. I wrung so much water out of towels that I have blisters on my hand. My hand is a wuss, apparently.

And the kicker is that we determined the water came from a leaky wax seal at the base of the toilet. At least it was clean water, you know? I seriously dreaded the smell if it was toilet backup or anything. So now the worst thing I'm dealing with is the fact that our carpet is wetter than damp at the doorways, which makes for slightly dampened socks when I walk on it. I hate that.