Friday April 25, 2008

Really and truly, what next?  After the events of yesterday I was certainly looking forward to things going better today.  You know, you go to bed and the next morning things are just so different.  And after eight loads of laundry, cleaning the house, and putting six more meals in the freezer (can you tell my first baby didn’t rank very high on the most contented baby list the first two months), I was completely exhausted.

I woke up soon after three for that uterine induced bathroom trek and couldn’t go back to sleep because of contractions.  No, not the “good productive, wow this is here” kind.  The “annoying, bring you back when you’re just about to drift off to sleep” kind.  So I lay there in bed thinking a million thoughts not the least of which included huge grattitude that I’d slept at all after pulling something wrong in my shoulder yesterday during the escapade with Goldi.

Around 4:15 I heard a pop downstairs that didn’t sound like the normal sounds our house makes.  I woke David Lee who went to check it out while I lay in bed feeling really dumb for waking him.  You know, women hear everything and think every bad thing imaginable.  But then as he went down the steps I heard other sort of shuffling noises.  He calmly came back upstairs and asked me what we should use to clean water off the floor.

Water?  What water?  “The line to the ice maker burst and there’s water all over the kitchen floor,” he said.  He grabbed towels.  I decided it must not be too big a deal; but grabbed another armful and headed down after him just in case.  Water all over the floor.  No kidding.  I mean, you could have sloshed, not just slipped.  The towels barely touched it.  The pop I heard wasn’t the line popping, it was the floor shifting from the moisture.  And the shuffling wasn’t shuffling at all.  It was water hissing.

For the next 45 minutes we sopped water with the mop and towels, wrung them out, and did it again.  (Those mop buckets with the wringer thing on them are an awesome invention.)  I didn’t realize how bad it really was until we took the towels downstairs to the washer and saw water steadily dripping down into the basement.  Which means tearing insulation out of the ceiling tonight. 

About every ten minutes I keep thinking, “thank you, God.  thank you, God.  thank you, God.”  Because of a lot of things.  Like:

I was awake and heard the pop.  By the time David Lee would have come downstairs an hour later things would have been significantly worse.

The water didn’t go into the living room where it is carpeted.

The basement area below the kitchen is unfinished and so, unharmed except for the insulation.

With all Adam’s issues yesterday, I couldn’t be grateful enough that he was in bed and didn’t see the mess and disruption.

I have a trim carpenter husband who wisely took the toe kick off the island so we can dry it out underneath.

It happened at night when David Lee was home.  I would have despaired with that mess on my own.

It did NOT happen while we were at the hospital and gone for days.  I’ve always said I’d rather build then remodel and having to redo hardwood flooring and kitchen cabinets with a newborn would be enough to make me move out. 

The “last will and testament” of David Lee and Michelle were in an envelope on the floor by the door, not three feet away from the frig so that I would remember to take them to a safe deposit today.  Unharmed.  The island is heavy enough to have pulled the gallons of water that way instead of toward the door.

Only a few low places on the cabinets are already cracking from swelling.

By 5:15 I was laughing.  I mean, it’s just all so bizarre.  If anyone would have told me I’d sit down and drink coffee with David Lee at 5:30 this morning I would have scoffed.  I fell in love with him all over again this morning.  I love that he stays so calm in a crisis.  He just calmly and efficiently takes care of things.  None of this tear around, freak out about how the house is going to be ruined and the island is going to be ruined and we’ll have mildew in the house and iyiyiyiyiyi this and iyiyiyiyiyyiyiy that.  Not even with it happening on a morning when he has a deadline at work that had him at the office an hour early yesterday and supposedly again this morning.  He’s off to get fans from his family since we don’t have a portable one in the house.  And I am wondering if maybe, just maybe, we’ll get to have a good night of sleep tonight.

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• Tuesday April 29, 2008 →