There are days, and then there are days.…..

My hus­band, busy sort­ing papers last night, did not get to bed til after 2 AM.  Know­ing this, I decided this morn­ing to not wake him, and instead, leave him a note when I left to go to town to clean our office and then attend a cau­cus. Now the temps had risen, then fallen, so there had been some dis­cus­sion about him tak­ing me to my des­ti­na­tions if the roads were bad, but since the temps had risen and were hov­er­ing around 32, and the radio guy said the roads were just wet,  I fig­ured there was no prob­lem dri­ving myself. It was rain­ing and things were pretty slushy, but I headed out, know­ing if I could get to the black­top I was good. My first hint of pos­si­ble dis­as­ter was when I sunk into the muck and started fish­tail­ing down the dri­ve­way. Because it is down­hill I made it, but I knew there was no way in hell I’d make it to the black­top as it was up hill thru even worse slushed up gravel. Mak­ing an imme­di­ate deci­sion, I decided if I could get back up the dri­ve­way I could con­tinue to let my hus­band sleep and just wake him if I needed to, to take me to the cau­cus. Only by gun­ning the car was I able to make it back up the dri­ve­way and with shak­ing hands put my undam­aged car in the garage. By the time I got every­thing back out of the car I was soaked, as it was now rain­ing pretty hard. I got in the house, took off my drip­ping coat and decided to go into the den to see exactly what the temp was on our out­door ther­mome­ter. Thank God I did, as water was run­ning in streams down the walls. Need­less to say my hus­band was rudely awak­ened by my pan­icked “WE HAVE WATER RUNNING INTO THE HOUSE” wake up call.
Now over the course of the last week I have spent sev­eral days get­ting the ice jam off the west side of our house. I knew there was snow piled in the cor­ner where the water was now com­ing in, but I also knew I could not pos­si­bly get a lad­der thru the 4 foot drifts to get the snow off so just hoped God and warm weather coop­er­ated for a nice slow thaw. NOT. So we spent the bet­ter part of the morn­ing, in rain, try­ing to get the ice dam off the roof. We were soaked. Gloves were soaked and we used every pair in the house. Pants were soaked. Boots were soaked. Tow­els to catch the water drip­ping down walls were soaked. We used picks, salt, hot water and what ever we could think of and finally got the ice out and all the gut­ters opened so they could drain. And it rained harder. Need­less to say the cau­cus never hap­pened. And the drip­ping in the house stopped. And I spent the rest of the after­noon wash­ing and dry­ing every­thing. The guy that came to take the slush off the dri­ve­way said the gravel was almost impos­si­ble. And it is worse then ice when it gets like this. So I’m think­ing I’d cheer­fully take out the peo­ple that “just love a Jan­u­ary thaw”.  Get me their names.

My hus­band and I have been very lucky in that any time a major thing like this has hap­pened we have been home.….the fur­nace break­ing down in the mid­dle of win­ter, the pheas­ant fly­ing thru the liv­ing room win­dow, the tree com­ing down on the roof, the base­ment flood­ing, the roof in the kitchen leak­ing water every­where and now this. And for all you renters…you want to be home own­ers because???????

In the Celes­tine Prophecy it talks about every­thing hap­pen­ing for a rea­son. If I had made it up the road and safely to all the places I intended to go, I am pretty sure the water would not have been dis­cov­ered until I got home around 3 or 4, if at all,  at which time the wall and the floor would have been ruined as that room is not fre­quented by my hus­band unless pass­ing thru to the closet and even then I don’t know if he’d noticed it or not and I cer­tainly, at that time of day, would not have used the room. We wouldn’t have had the day­light to spend hours get­ting the dam off and every­thing would have been so much worse. So as much as I hate that the roads were too slushy to go down, and that I missed the cau­cus, and that I now have to clean the office tomor­row, I am ever so grate­ful events hap­pened as they did. What a day.