Hey y'all -
Happy Valentine's Day. (We'll just ignore that I'm writing this in April.)
If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times: Kindergarten is exhausting. Did I tell you about the time we had to "disguise" a turkey at Thanksgiving so it could escape the plate, so we made a full cheerleading uniform for a dang paper bird, complete with tissue paper skirt and pompoms? And then Laney took it to school and gave it to the substitute who thought Laney had made it for HER instead of for an assignment and took it home? I swear I wanted to find that substitute's house and beat her with a hose. Instead, we got to make a second turkey - this time, disguised as an astronaut with a tinfoil helmet and moon boots. A pain, to be sure, but I'm happy the turkey is so upwardly mobile.
So Valentine's Day rolled around, and our kitchen became the place dinosaur puns go to die. I really wanted to do an "I'm raptor 'round your finger" version, but I didn't have any rubber raptors.
Laney's Valentine's Day party at school was set for Friday, Feb 13th, but she woke up that morning sick as a dog. There was a strange, rampant "Missoula virus" that swept through town in February that caused exhaustion, constant cough and an earache. Everyone in our house got it but me, because Moms aren't allowed to get sick. Laney had to miss her school party, and was beyond upset.
The next day, everyone had recovered enough to at least be vertical, so we went for a walk in the woods.
in February, Laney also celebrated the 100th Day of the School Year, which is apparently a thing people do now. We didn't do this kind of thing back in the early 80's...we just ate our baloney on white bread out of our Dukes of Hazzard lunch box and tried to behave until our mamas picked us up in a Datsun hatchback. And we only got to watch cartoons on Saturday mornings and we didn't have all these themed dress-up days at school and extra holidays because our mamas didn't have Pinterest.
According to my fitbit doohickey, in February, I hit the million-steps mark while on a walk around town. Bought myself a new pair of shoes to celebrate.
The March rolled around, and our toilet stopped flushing. Nothing would flush, nothing would drain. Water backed up everywhere. Your dad tried the normal unclogging steps, including snaking the drain, then said, "The only way I'm going to figure out what the problem is is to take up the floor." In the time it took me to walk up the stairs to my computer and yell, "I'm just going to look up the number for a plumber so we can get a profess-," your dad had started demoing the bathroom. By the end of the afternoon, it was a stripped concrete box. We don't need no stinkin' bathroom.
Your dad doesn't mess around.
For the first few days after our house became a 3 bedroom, zero bath, I rented us a cute little house up the street. But moving our stuff back and forth and keeping everyone's school and work stuff together and figuring out where we were going to eat became a bigger hassle than just tee-teeing in the yard. Three days in, when a cold front took the temperatures down to the teens, Laney said, "I'm just going to go in Hagen's potty." We showered at the Y and made the best of it, and resorted to some things we shall not speak of again.
We learned that our ancient plumbing had been leaking into the wall for who knows how many years, and the walls were rotten. Everything had to go and everything had to be rebuilt. Your dad re-plumbed the bathroom and taught me how to lay tile. Halfway through, I called your Grandpops in Missouri to report I was learning really advanced construction techniques from his son, like, "If it isn't going where you want it to, hit it harder, with a bigger hammer."
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| photo by Laney |
It's possible your dad had TOO much help with this project.
I am pleased to report that as of last week, we have a working shower and toilet and are once again living like civilized people who don't have to tinkle behind the hot tub.
Love,
Mom
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