Just another day....

I had the craziest day the other day. I don’t have crazy days every day – just the OTHER day. 

If I were an everyday blogger, I would be better at this AND this would be a doozy. Everyday blogging would be something. I don’t have enough to write about that anyone would want to read EVERY DAY.  Most of the time I sit down at the computer on Tuesday morning and think out loud.  I try not to do that too often – people tend to stay away from you if you do that.  

Just a personal experience antidote. 

You are welcome.

Today we will review a day in the life with bullets – the safe kind.  I’ve never worked with them before – so how exciting will this be? If they were real, it would be more exciting.  I could juggle them, throw them really fast at targets, stuff like that.   What am I?  A circus performer?  No, I'm not.  A Blood thirsty dare devil, are you?  I don't have a gun either. Too bad, punctuation bullets is all I got.

Probably won't be too exciting though– it is only Tuesday, not Wednesday which is known as hump day.   I know it is not literally “hump” day, but the 15-year-old boy inside my head thinks “hehehehehe” every time someone refers to Wednesday as hump day.  I’m really quite juvenile.

Anyway, this is how the day went down. 

• 100+- year old house
•  Rolling hills of green ever-growing grass
• Crazy lunatic puppy as an assistant and distraction
• Me on a riding mower
• ___________________________________
• =  Mowed grass but house still old   < = energetically unstable puppy

(I even included a math problem.  I have mad math skiils.  My mind is keen.)

That was the boring part, as you would have guessed because of the math problem.

• Victory dancing in my head (because I finished mowing) as I approach the house. 
• Note that there is water pooling in my yard.  Further note that the sprinklers are not on. 
• Done noting, and start panicking/swearing in my head. WTH?
• Puppy starts her own noting of pools.  Commences with a victory dance – in the pools.
• Puppy loving the bubbling sounds and water spewing out of the ground at various locations in my yard.  Decides to go for the source and begins digging. 
•  Realize I am just staring and emotionally slap myself and wake up.  Dang – it could be sewer or broken pipe.  I watch the dog for a moment and decide I have more important things to figure out even though my cream colored dog is now black and tan – like a beer my husband drinks.  I wish I had that beer right now. 

OK, screw the bullets.  That is too hard.  I don’t think I was doing it right anyway!

Walking further in the yard, I realize there is a very big depression in the yard.  The beginning of a sinkhole? I realize I don’t really know about sinkholes, but I’m sure this is how they all start.  Crap crap crap.  I back away slowly.  

Mud is flying everywhere from Annie’s dedicated search for the leak.   I have mud on my clothes, face and hair.

I race into the house, with a very excited muddy dog following me asking herself, “What will happen next?” 

My sump pump is working its’ little heart out, but the water seems to be coming into the cellar from the outside.  I think, “WTH” again, and curse “This Old House”, because they never responded to my eloquent plea for help.  I painted a very enticing invitation, but they never called.  This is their fault.  Damn them and their know how.

Annie is splashing around in the water in the cellar.  This is indeed a bonus day for her.   I notice she is now a little cleaner.

I am, however, a little grossed out because this very well could be sewer.  Whose sewer is the question because I have not been in the “loo” for hours.  Ew, Ew, Ew. There is no smell though.  . . . .

I am like an impaired Sherlock Holmes.

I realize the time.  I’m supposed to pick up my daughter after school.  She will be waiting with her boyfriend.  I can’t be late or I might be a grandmother.  (Not really, but that is always in my head. Doesn’t it flash through every parent’s head when their daughter is alone with a boy?)

 I am now teetering on the brink of my limited sanity.  I decide that I should just walk away.  La de la laa.  Act like I didn’t see it.  Maybe I will stop for a latte on the way home…. This is the flight syndrome.  I like it, it is momentarily freeing.  But, I am a bad bad liar and if I were to be interrogated, or even asked anything, like “how’s the weather?” it would all be over.   I would start wringing my hands like Lady Macbeth and mutter, “Out damn spot, out I say”.  She, too, had too much on her plate and probably a sinkhole or two in her back yard. You know, back behind the castle, in one of her gardens.  OK, she probably didn't know she had them, but does it make them any less real?  I say they were there.

I needs to get some of this!

I pull Annie out before she decides to roll around and drink the cellar “liquid”.  We return to the yard.  Hooray, she is back in the mud.

Pass the buck, pass the buck… I look around.  The birds are singing. No one is around on this god-forsaken island.  Sometimes solitude and tranquility is not all it is cracked up to be.

Annie is on her 3^rd hole.  She is looking very focused.  Maybe she can find the leak?

I decide this is a job for my husband.  I call him and he is very calm.  Of course, I’m the one who would have to care for the baby.

I try to appear very much in control as I explain the situation, but I am sweating just a little bit. Meanwhile, all is quiet around me.  Birds are singing, there is the burbling sound, and Annie is focusing on her digging.  I think he can see right through me because I am talking in a very high-pitched voice and repeating myself. He tells me to stop putting the phone to the ground; he says, he “cannot hear the sound” for the 4^th time.  I explain it sounds like the oil when it comes bubbling out of the ground on the “Beverly Hill Billies”.  He doesn’t seem to care about the sound.  I momentarily entertain the thought that it would be great if it WAS oil – we could be rich.

..and up from the ground, came the bubbling crude...

            I look back toward my swamp. –It is continuing to grow.  I Spy with my spy eye a swamp monster, hard at work, digging a 4^rd hole.  She is now just black, forget the tan.  I should just go straight up for the Guinness.

The “Unflappable One” tells me to go shut off the water in the pump shed. 

Ewww, that is a bad place.  Big spider webs and spiders.  It makes me frown and my face scrunches up.  I should have run when I had the chance. 

I run out there with my mud caked dog.  This is not at all what I had in mind when we bought this house.  I never intended on having to go into this shed. 

There are spiders – expected, and dead mice – not expected.  Annie decides she might give them a push and a sniff.  I push her out, and flip what looks like the switch.

I check the time again, the lovebirds will now be alone about 15 minutes.  Eeegads.  I hear JCPenneys is a good place for baby clothes.

I run back to the house.  Annie resumes her previous duties. Water is still gurgling.  I have seriously exhausted my problem solving skills AND I seriously no longer care about the flood.

I see the neighbor lady.  Yay!  I explain the situation in a high-pitched voice and I begin to start wringing my hands.  I shove them in my pockets and she calls her husband.  She is starting to sound high pitched.  My evil plan is working – it is now her problem.  The water seems to be coming from her house. 

The clouds have parted and the sun is shining.  I think Annie hears the angels singing and looks up with a black muzzle.

We decide that the neighbor lady and her husband will own the problem and I will rinse off my dog and save myself from becoming the old lady who lives in the shoe (who had so many grandchildren she didn’t know what to do).

Time for me to go.  I look at the dog.  Of course, the water is off.  Flight is back.  I have to get out of there before the lady wants to hand her problem back to me.  I load Annie into the car and she lays her muddy self down.  

She did her best to help and now she must rest.  I race around to the drivers seat.

I made it to pick up my daughter.  She was sitting in front of the school talking to her boyfriend and a group of other kids.

She bounces out to the car.  I scrutinize her – she looks like she did this morning.  She scrutinizes me and then looks in the back at Annie. 

“OMG, Mom, what happened?”

“Yeah, listen to a story about a man named Jeb.  A poor Mountaineer, barely kept his family fed…”

yes, yes, it might be possible...oil that is...