Lemony Webbles

woes-lite

Here are our woes:

We've all been sick and a bit miserable with colds/teething for the last few days. Our plumbing woes continue to unveil themselves in new and unusual ways- we've now counted FOUR completely unrelated sources for the water coming in from one corner of the basement: 1. leaky water pipe (fixed), 2. leaky water main (contested by water company, never resolved), 3. buried, clogged gutter pipe (unearthed and removed), 4. (and this is the kicker) blocked sewer pipe that pours water right onto our driveway whenever we run the dishwasher or run water in the kitchen sink (dug up by Billy after I figured out the dishwasher/driveway puddle connection last week-- I've been trying to get plumbers and water company people to listen to me about that weird puddle for MONTHS, but noone listens to me because it's coming from the same exact spot as the gutter runoff and because I'm a girl and therefore must know nothing about such things-- grrrrr!). We've also managed to flood the basement twice ourselves by accidentally blocking the laundry tub drain where the washer drains. We've spent a good deal of time propping up the poor basement carpet and mopping/wiping up/putting a fan on/moving furniture and boxes out of the wet areas down there. We've just gotten everything dry again and rolled the carpet back in it's spot and I'm kind of nervous to put the furniture back again. Perhaps I should go with that and rethink the whole putting-anything-valuable-in-the-basement idea. Our other woe is that Billy and I are stressing about what kind of swing set/slide/fort/monkey bars to put up in our backyard and how much is reasonable to spend on it and who's going to build it and what kind of wood it should be made of- pressure treated pine with copper (safer than arsenic, which used to be used to treat outdoor lumber) or natural (expensive) farm-raised sustainably-grown redwood.

Sometimes it's just no fun being a grown up. Remember when mom took care of you when you were sick and water was a good thing and just really fun to play in and anything having to do with getting a swing set was just about playing on the thing? Today I really really want that back. Simple.

Of course, there are perks to being an adult, like solo international travel and being married and getting to eat as much chocolate as you want.

I'll tell you what I'm thankful for though. My woes are more like woes-lite: all the whining for just a third of the actual difficulties. I'm quite aware of that because: 1. Billy just watched Grave of the Fireflies- a very sad anime movie about a little girl that dies in WWII Japan from lack of food even though her big brother tries his hardest to take care of her after their parents are killed by fire bombs dropped on them by..mm..this country. Sad sad sad. 2. Georgia and I had a talk this morning about how close she and Maya have come to dying when they each got really sick a couple years ago (Georgia with a weird strep- not too close to dying but still really scary, and Maya with rotavirus- quite close, actually, but saved by Billy's persistence and modern medicine). It was a sobering talk, but we were all really grateful, at the end, to all be together and to only have minor ailments.