Horse Poo Days

Ever have one of those days? Days that could be disastrous or wonderful, depending on your viewpoint? I like to call them horse-poo days. And we had one on Friday.

Our basement gets flooded often when we do laundry because the pipes are old and thin. My husband informs the landlord that he 'blew out' the pipes (aka removing the clog with a snake-like thingie that shoots high-pressure water into it), and all is usually well for a few weeks. Then it clogs and we have to blow it out again.

Except this time the water didn't go away right away. It decided it wanted to come up from the concrete under the dryer. Not good. And no, my husband didn't do it! Those pipes must be fossils by now- I think they were there since they built the place, when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Apparently we have really old fossils...er...I mean pipes, and one cracked. Under the concrete. That's something my husband couldn't blow out if he used a sneezing elephant. And the landlord said that the plumber can't come until Monday. Sigh.

The best part (please note the sarcasm) is I had a ton of dirty dishes in the dishwasher and the sink, as well as a ton of laundry. This cracked pipe meant no water usage in the back half of the house- which meant no kitchen water, and no basement water. I can't do any dishes or laundry!

But the bathroom water pipes are fine, so we can at least do the important stuff, like keep clean and...you know. That's much more important than dishes.

The really best part (please note the lack of sarcasm) was God turned this into a positive experience. I got to improvise. I took our huge cooler and dragged it outside while my husband hooked up the hose to the hot water, allowing me to fill the cooler and soak the dishes while I set up a table and laid out towels. I got a bucket for rinsing, and had the kids fill the cooler with every dirty dish in the house. Then I washed, and they dried and put them away. We were a well-oiled machine.

People kept passing by asking us when we were having the yard sale. It's nice to know that our dishes looked good enough that other people wanted them!

And while I could have groused about it (and believe me, I was close to it at one point), I hear my daughter say, "Hey Mom, this is kinda fun!" And when I really thought about it, she was right. It was kind of fun to be together doing something unusual- even if it was dishes! It was what I call a horse-poo moment- you can think of it as a mess, or use it as fertilizer, depending on your point of view. I prefer the latter!

God blessed me with a daughter who thinks like that sometimes. She helps me see the fun side of things, which is a fantastic blessing, because as we all parents know, sometimes we forget things can be fun- even the stuff that drives us crazy.

But I still refuse to do the laundry out of my cooler!

Laundry will either be done via the laundromat or by the borrowing of a neighbors machine, so that's covered. And this week will be fraught with meals that use as little dishes as possible, yet still be home-cooked. Maybe we don't even need to use the oven- I can ask the neighbors if I can use their grill, and offer to make them some grilled goodies too, turning it into a nice get-together!

That sounds awesome, doesn't it? I think I need to buy some paper plates!

So take those horse-poo moments and turn them into fertilizer- it makes a much prettier flower patch in God's garden!