What next?

Well, just when I thought I had things under control, reality struck with a vengeance. And the day started so well, too. I am grounded from yard sale-ing (the DH thinks the house is full enough, what does he know?), so I told everyone I was going to get doughnuts, and I did. With a few tiny longer stops at interesting "tourist attractions" on the way. Only by the time I hit the doughnut shop, I was out of money and had to run into the grocery store across the street for some cash. Of course, the cash wasn't for the doughnuts, it was for any other "tourist attractions" I might have missed on the way home.

It was a great hour ride to the doughnut shop. And home again. I found some really cute things for staging the house to sell. When I get home with staging stuff, I put it in my garage, right next to the doors for the water heater, and I have a great stash of pictures and furniture that are going to look really cute when I start seriously decorating . . . after I get all the junk out of the house that I drug in from yard sales, I mean.

But today I kind of took a break from sorting and tidying and let the kids play outside for a while and I watched the end of the Holiday that I started watching last night before bed. Such a cute movie! But four hours later I was still vegging and the kids had disappeared, so I rounded everyone up and started taking orders for dinner. It's really great how Wal-Mart has such a fabulous selection of processed kid foods that only take a quick zap in the microwave to make hot, nourishing, and edible. Well, hot anyway.

After the kids dinners are ready, I begin to prepare my humble repast, a delicious someones beach pizza with spinach and peppers, and my mouth is really watering, right up until I glance out the kitchen window and see Niagara Falls rushing down my driveway. And no one left a hose on. The phenomenal cascade was issuing forth from under my garage door, and my pizza never even makes it into the microwave as I hit the panic button (otherwise known as the button that opens the garage door), I careen out of my house screaming for children to help figure out what the problem is. Bless their hearts, I am prone to believing that all unnatural disasters originate with my kids. And no, they haven't been in California recently!

My children are exonerated as the problem becomes all too obvious: the water heater has given up the ghost. I frantically hit the power breakers so no one is electrocuted as I yell to my oldest to grab the water valve key and shut off our water at the street. Darned kid insisted on getting dressed before he rushed outside to obey my orders. Doesn't have any sense of proportion; just because he was trying to shower as the water heater exploded does not give him a valid excuse for being undressed during a household emergency! We had the water shut off in record time, but the kitchen, laundry room, and garage were all flooded, and even as I type this I am still trying to dry out the water encroachment areas.

Eventually I was able to contact a friend who referred me to a plumber who, for $175.00, will come out and cap off the heater to hold us until Monday when a new water heater can, for a $950 service charge plus the cost of the "part," be installed in its proper place. Except for the fact that the sub flooring area needs to be replaced. And I can't get the picture out my head of poor Dale, the plumber, lifting the defunct and decrepit old heater out of the closet, and saying something along the lines of, "I've seen 'em worse, but I can't thing when," as he clucked over the completely rusted out and mostly missing bottom.

Just to make it all interesting, my autistic five year old decided that this was the time to practice all of his game playing social skills in the driveway: four-square, catch, soccer, street hockey (yes, I do mean street hockey, and he is a little scary with a hockey stick!), and dodge ball. Just a note to all my friends: a flooded, muddy yard and driveway are not the best places to play a nice game of dodge ball, which is how the family game mud-ball came to be invented, straight from Texas.

Which should promptly be followed by a quick game of "catch the muddy pig and throw him into a cold shower because there is no hot water," and a wrap up of "wash the mud off everything you were wearing without tracking mud through the house, especially not the living room full of the previously clean, folded, sorted clothes and linens!" The only saving grace to all of it is that at least the dog was inside. And, as I mentioned before, all my beautiful house staging items were against the water heater door. As it flooded the house and garage. I am going to be cleaning up this mess until the day I die, I think. Which will probably be very soon if I have too many days like this one!

Tidy-challenged

Well, life got a little more interesting this week. The DH (darling husband) has moved on ahead of us and is in Boston as a fun little prelude to our trek north to New York. It cracks me up that we got married in Colorado, spent our honeymoon in the middle of the Mohave desert, moved to Maryland, moved to Idaho, moved to Texas, are moving to New York. . . kind of like having a root canal year after year. With no anesthesia. And a dull, rusty drill. Well, maybe not that bad, but I'm not looking forward to moving the kids again after just two years in Texas. They take comfort from my saying I moved all the time growing up as an Air Force Brat kind of like I took comfort as a kid from my parents telling me they had to walk to school 10 miles and it was uphill both ways and the snow was always four feet deep.

The two oldest are supposed to be helping me to get the house ready to move, but so far their interpretation of help is to empty everything we own onto the floor so it's easier for the packers to see. . .Does home owner's insurance cover packers tripping on our junk, or is it workman's comp? Do they charge extra if we leave it all inconveniently tucked away instead of solicitously strewn about in plain sight? And do I have to pay extra for 3 cartons large enough to each fit a child, a week's worth of provisions and a Nintendo DS?

Such thoughts I have as I am trying to sort through years of debris. I know of people who actually throw out everything not nailed down, sometimes even before their family members are finished with the items. Like the current newspaper, that morning's breakfast, or the cup of coffee in their hand. . . I am tidy challenged, and sometimes I think I really can't blame it on the kids. I just believe there are so many more interesting things to do than housework; ice skating (today's field trip), grocery shopping, cartwheeling through hot coals, trimming the five-year old's finger nails. . . just about anything is better than housework. I am sure it's just an attitude thing, but after three kids and the same messes day after day, and the same monotonous tasks hour after hour, it takes a better imagination than mine to make housework interesting and rewarding. Maybe I need to set up one of those token economies for myself. . .wash three dirty dishes, win a free Kewpie doll or something. Mmmm.

Anyway, as a tidy-challenged person, this moving thing is the pits. We have enough to keep us busy around here without trying to stuff everything we own into boxes and figure out what's in them after we've moved. I hope they don't mind the puppy mud on the baseboards. Maybe we'll even have the amount of stuff we own thinned down to what actually fits into our house by the time the movers really get here. Just because I'm tidy-challenged doesn't mean I can't be an optimist!

On the bright side, COBRA coverage is retroactive. . .

Hubby's last day at his current job is two days from now. His kind-hearted, family-oriented employer, unlike his previous ones, does not extend his medical benefits to the end of the month, but truncates them on midnight of his last day. Friday. Two days from now. This is enough to strike terror into the heart of this mild-mannered, catastrophizing mom. (Those of you who know me, scratch the mild-mannered.) For instance, what if I have a kid dragged into an unsolicited, impromptu neighborhood wrestling match, get a double concussion and post-concussion syndrome, and be out of commission for six weeks? Wait a minute, that happened in June, and lightning never strikes twice in the same place, right? I'd hate to bet the bike shop on that one, Orville; I know this kid! How about: another kid gets a sinus infection, goes into a spectacular anaphylactic reaction at school from the antibiotics, breaks out in hives, stops breathing, hefty emergency room visits, but by the grace of God, survives. . .oh, yeah, that was in May, not gonna happen again. No way. Can't happen at school, because I'm home schooling her now! And has anybody actually paid attention to how much COBRA coverage is these days? I am sure it's going to be more than my mortgage, which is really saying something.

Now my hubby has come up with a new idea: "Let's try going for 10 days with no health insurance coverage for our 3 careful, mild-mannered, sit-like-a-lump children (Right!). What could happen in only ten days?(It'll be fun seeing how long we can dodge the bullet)." Well, two emergency room trips for starters, not to mention my impending heart attack, brought on by a too active imagination. . .ambulance and nebulizer and epi-pen, OH, MY! Gotta go, the kids are jumping on the trampoline next door . . .