I just realized it’s Wednesday. Evening. The last three days have seemingly whizzed right past me. I think it’s because it’s taken me this long to recover from my weekend.
It started a bit on Friday. Fridays are usually grocery shopping days. And it seems that most any day I plan to go grocery shopping (Friday or otherwise) my Little Man decides not to nap well. For those of you parents out there, I’m sure you understand what it’s like to try to drag a crabby, sleepy child grocery shopping. It’s pretty much my least favorite thing ever. My brain power goes to trying to keep him from screaming, crying, wriggling out of the seat of the cart, and I forget what I’m shopping for. It also takes about 3 times as long this way. So after a terrible morning nap, I decided not to go shopping during my usual preferred time (between morning & afternoon naps) and hope for a better afternoon nap. Well, after a second terrible nap, I wasn’t excited about taking him to the store, but I was out of time and options.
Thankfully, my husband was leaving work about the time we were ready to go and so he met us at Target. The shopping trip went better than expected, in great part to the motorized shopping cart my still-crippled husband used. My Little Man thought it was the greatest thing ever and stopped fussing as soon as they were moving in it. He even figured out how to make it move himself.
Such a smarty-pants.
Although the grocery shopping didn’t go as terribly as I thought it would, I was still exhausted after a day of dealing with incessant crabby sleepiness (oh, and the baby) and was gearing up for what was going to be a busy day on Saturday. We had a wedding to go to, and I had finished the gift but not the card or the fancy wrapping job I was planning.
I spent the evening after dinner & Little Man’s bedtime working on the gift wrapping and we didn’t get to bed as early as I was hoping. Oh well, I thought, I could deal. It would be a busy day on Saturday, but at least we could rest on Sunday. Right.
In the middle of the night, I got up to use the bathroom and noticed a strange sound. But it was in the middle of the night and I was delusional, so I didn’t think too much of it.
In the morning, it was still there. It was a sort of hissing sound, which is never good. I brought it up to my husband, and he did a little investigating and found a leak in a pipe in the basement.
Great.
We had too much to do in order to get to the wedding that evening, so we put some duct tape on it to reduce the flow somewhat and put a bucket under it. Hubby ran out to the store to get supplies to fix it Sunday, and we decided we’d turn the water off overnight.
We went on with the rest of the day, got to the wedding on time, and had a good time. My friend, Emily, the bride, wanted my Little Man to be there, but since it was an evening wedding (6pm) and he goes to bed early (7pm) we had to do some creative maneuvering and had my in-laws pick him up at the wedding venue after the ceremony.
It was a lovely wedding, and we had a lot of fun. It was another late night, however, and the next day was Sunday. Sunday morning I had to put Little Man down for a nap before I left for worship team practice, and he wouldn’t go down easy. I had to leave him, crying, with my husband so I could get to practice on time-ish (ha!) and then after a sound check and a couple of songs, I had to leave & come back home to pick up the baby and the cripple to get them to the service on time. That part has been pretty normal since my husband’s surgery, since he still can’t put full weight on his right leg.
One more week until he gets to walk like normal again!
(And there was much rejoicing.)
Anyway, church went well, but we got home a little later than normal because we were celebrating our pastor’s being at our church for 30 years! It’s pretty impressive. So there was a cake reception after the service, which we attended for a short time.
When we got home, Little Man was beyond tired, and again didn’t take a great nap. I was too tired to care.
We had gotten 4 giant bags of hand-me-down clothes from a family at our church (thanks, Maria!) and we decided to sort them into boxes along with other clothes we had for Little Man before we tackled the plumbing issue.
Well, as luck would have it, in the middle of sorting the clothes, our power went out. Inexplicably. There hadn’t been any storms that day, and it wasn’t extraordinarily hot or anything. We called the power company, who said it was expected to be back before 5pm. We made the Little Man take a third nap because he was overly crabby, which meant we didn’t dare try to work on the plumbing for fear of waking him.
After he woke up, we embarked on our plumbing adventure. It involved candles and my holding both the baby & the flashlight. The Little Man was really crabby about the whole thing, and cried when I had to put him down. My husband cut the pipe, removed the bad stuff, cut new pipe, and soldered it in place. It was time to put it to the test.
Fail.
We had water pouring out from the new joints. At this point, it was after 5, and still no power. We called again and they said it would be on after 8. We ate dinner and put the baby to bed, and my husband went out again to get more supplies. At this point, with no power, he wasn’t in any mood to try the traditional method of soldering the pipes. He barely made it to the hardware store before it closed, but he was able to get these Sharkbite things. They’re awesome. They work great and require no solder. But they also cost a good deal more. But when you’re desperate, and have no electricity, you bite the bullet to get it done.
It took us until after 10 to get it finished, but it worked like a charm. I lived in a third-world country for many years and I’m used to dealing with power outages and water issues. But generally we didn’t have them at the same time. But it’s definitely more difficult to be without water than without power. I was so happy to be able to shower. Oh, and the electricity still wasn’t on. It was a candlelit shower.
We found out that there had been a transformer that needed replacing on our block. The electricity finally came back at exactly 1am. Thankfully, even with all the craziness, Little Man slept all night. I wish I could say the same for myself. Thankfully the couple of nights since then I’ve slept better.
It was exhausting, and I’m glad it’s over.
I meant to be sharing about the wedding crafts I made this week, but, like I said at the beginning, this week has really gotten away from me. Not to worry, I’ll make sure to show you the card, gift, and wrapping I made in the next few days. Promise!
I hope your weekend was a bit less eventful than ours!