What Kept Me Away

So, last week, when I wasn't posting at all, things were just nuts. Wednesday was probably the craziest day of all. My mom was in town, Mr. X was on a business trip, and I "took the day off" . . . or tried to, anyway. I knew that I still had some work to do, but as usual, I underestimated exactly how much work.

In the morning, we went and had massages, which was great fun, and then we did a little bit of shopping. So, I did accomplish taking the morning off.

When we got back to the house, I saw Wonderdog slink guiltily out of the guest room . . . a sure indication that she had been in Mom's bed. I ran down to check it out, and noticed that the room really smelled like dog. As I went to open the window, I looked at Mom's bed. And Wonderdog had peed ALL OVER IT. I mean all over it. She got both pillows, the comforter, the sheets . . . thank God, we had a thick mattress pad with a memory foam pad underneath it, so the mattress escaped unscathed. We have this great enzyme treatment for just such incidents (she has averaged a similar incident once every two years, so it isn't like it happens all the time, but we had some left over from two years ago). So, I grabbed all the bedding, sprayed it down, and put it in big garbage bags (to keep it from drying out) while it sat for the requisite couple of hours before washing.

I sat down and did a little bit of work. Then I went to put in the first load of wash. My mom ran out to grab some dinner for us while I did some more work. Right before she returned home, I ran down to put in the next load of wash. And I noticed the large puddle of water on the floor of the laundry room.

We've had major water problems in this house. Major. The sewer has backed up into the downstairs several times (hence the new flooring throughout the entire downstairs). Perhaps the most dramatic water incident was the time I tried to refill our outdoor hot tub on an unseasonably warm February day, only to find out after the hose had been running for 45 minutes that that pipe had burst. I made that discovery when I ran downstairs and noticed that the puddles on top of the carpet.

So, when we redid our bathroom and laundry room, Mr. X put in footers (because our walls DIDN'T HAVE ANY) and sealed the base of each wall very well. And, fortunately, when the washing maching overflowed, the seals held and the water stayed in the tiled area.

But I still had to clean up the water and try to figure out what was wrong with the washing machine, since I had five more loads of bedding that needed to be washed before the enzyme solution dried on the cloth (did I mention that our bathtub is under construction? I didn't? So there was nowhere to soak the bedding in the meantime). I spent an eternity testing the washing machine (note to self: even though our clearly unsafe old washing machine will sort of churn the clothes while the lid is open, it will not spin or drain until the lid is closed. That isn't a pause for soaking. It's a pause while the washer waits for you to CLOSE THE DARN LID!) and could find nothing wrong. By now, I was half an hour late for choir practice. My saintly mother offered to take the bedding to the laundromat while I went to rehearsal. We loaded up the car and drove to the laundromat . . . which had closed 15 minutes before we arrived. So we drove to the next laundromat . . . which was also closed! Does no one in my town do laundry after 8pm?

So, we went to choir practice, and then returned home. I set up a towel perimeter around the washing machine, with our little battery-powered water alarm inside the perimeter, and ran a load of laundry. And it worked perfectly. So, I stayed up until 3:30am finishing the "little bit of work" I needed to do on my "day off," which also enabled me to finish all of the dog-pee laundry, plus a couple of loads of towels used to clean up the washing machine overflow water.

Thank God the dog only does this every two years!