My life in a washing machine? Right now, we're stuck on spin cycle.
It all began last Tuesday, when I woke up and crept out of bed to leave my two little dreamers asleep in their beds so I could get myself ready for the day! One step, two step, squish, squish, SLOSH!!! Bleary-eyed and mildly disoriented, I recounted the thorough cleaning of my carpets the day before. I had borrowed a carpet cleaning machine from my dear friend, Lindsay, and spent a couple of hours getting my carpets sparkly clean. I remembered them being a little damp before going to bed, but with the dehumidifier running in my room, surely they'd be dry. And that didn't explain why I was standing in a puddle in my bedroom. "HI!!!" shouted Lawson from his crib. Two pairs of smiling eyes greeted me and snapped me into reality. I looked down, water above my toes. Hmmm. Slosh, slosh, splash. I opened the door to see that this puddle in the carpet of my room was really just the lake to the hallway's river. A lazy river, but a river just the same. And the mouth from which this river was fed, was the mighty Throne Ocean. AKA: my toilet.
A little geography and background on the Throne Ocean before I go any further. It is known to gurgle and bubble without explanation, is a bit tricky to flush at times and prefers to run continuously if not manually shot off. Well, this turned out to be a really bad combination.
Upon discovering the steady waterfall cascading down the side of the toilet, I shut the water off immediately then stood in the middle of the river (hallway) staring at the lakes to the south and the east of me. We'll call them Lake Used to be My Bedroom and Lake Living Room. There was a third and yet undiscovered Lake Unfortunately Messy Closet, but luckily I didn't have to think about that lake yet.
So, here's the scenario for me at that point: our wood floors had been finished just three days prior, which meant that everything we owned (minus the kitchen items) were all crammed into our small downstairs and small garage. I had two small children with multiple immediate needs, such as fresh diapers and food, and I was standing in a river fed by my toilet, overlooking carpet lakes. By the way, standing in water first thing in the morning only adds to your need to pee, which you can not do when the toilet would only spew it into the river flowing into your bedroom. Not cool. Oh, yeah, and it was just me at home to deal with this thanks to Dustin having left the week before. Just call me Captain Kim. I would have made a much better Skipper. Truly!
So, at that point, I did the only thing any confident, seasoned captain would do. I called my mom. About five minutes into explaining my disbelief and inability to figure out what to do, I realized that calling my mother, who lives in an entirely separate state, was not actually helpful. So, I called the Commanding Officer of our squadron's wife, Maureen, who was literally the North Star guiding this captain to dry land. She was on her way over (as soon as she could organize what to do with her four kids. Yes, four kids and she's on her way over immediately. Amazing.) While I waited, I called insurance to, thankfully, find out that we were covered with our home-owners insurance and began throwing every towel in sight into the river then into the spin cycle over and over.
Before I knew it, Maureen arrived and spent the next 12 hours helping me care for the kids and carrying all of our stuff either upstairs to our newly finished floors that I was scared to death of scratching or into our garage, which is now the stuff that nightmares are made of. Tell me that is not incredible! Words can not even convey how thankful I was and am that she came to my rescue!
Halfway through the day, we discovered Lake Under the Stair Storage and I almost lost it staring at my giant wet Pottery Barn Box full of my not-yet-used Christmas Decorations. There were cuss words muttered and tears held back. I'm not proud of it, but there it is. I made it through un-medicated 32 hour labor only cussing once (It was mid-contraction and I believe it went something like, "Back Labor Sucks! Piece of $h!t!") but mess with my Pottery Barn Decorations and I truly took on the role of a sailor. It was at that point, I also realized that I was in too far over my head and only had Maureen for the day. There would be more days on this journey and I needed help.
Enter my saviors. My mother and father-in-law. The dam burst when I got on the phone with my mother-in-law, Brenda. I actually only got the words, "I need help!" out of my mouth before bursting into tears that left me unable to talk for a minute or so and surely left her imagination running wild as to what was wrong! And bless their souls, they were on the road within an hour with an arrival time of 1am. Yes, one in the morning. By then, we'd cleared out all but the big pieces of furniture from downstairs. The terribly heavy and awkward king size memory foam mattress was a group effort! My friend Lindsay brought us pizza after a LONG first day at a new job then helped carry the giant mattress and box springs and frame up the stairs. That's a good friend, if you ask me! The clean-up crew was still hard at work getting the drying out process started when Jim and Brenda got in and finally at 2:30 am, we waved goodbye to the clean-up crew and sprinted toward our pillows.
So, in the annoying words of Alanis Morrisette, Thank you spin cycle. Thank you C.O.'s wife. Thank you. Thank you in-laws!!! Thank you insurance. Thank you happy kids! Thank you, my awesome friends!!!
It was a long week trying to get organized to come down to Oregon, but we made it. It's been wet down here, but it's much more fun getting wet during a morning walk/run with a good friend than when you step out of bed in the morning. And I'm having a much better time spinning out wet clothes from a walk than wet towels from the Hallway River.
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