breaking down

Maya fell on the floor yesterday and landed on the cup she was holding, producing her first bloody nose. "She's got red!" Ella yelled. I don't know what I was expecting. Perhaps, "Nurse, STAT to the kitchen!"

The auger on the corn stove busted this morning (a very messy and obnoxious repair job Sandi did about 2 months ago), the CD player in the Vue was non functional yesterday, our oven won't get up to temperature, the snow blower has a tire that wants to spin like a top instead of use its traction to move forward, I had to shovel out the Savage St. house AGAIN because it still hasn't sold, and our van is getting its bumper replaced for the second time in 6 weeks.

Then we had the sewer back up into our basement. Now we are officially swimming in shit.

Sandi called Roto Rooter and spent 48 hours playing the phone equivalent of hide and seek with them. They said they would come between 4 and 6 Friday and then called at 11 p.m. when we were asleep and said, (in normal cheery daytime tones) "Sorry, we haven't gotten there yet. Can we come in a little bit?" They totally won, though, because we fell for it when they told us they would come at 8 the next morning and then again when they told us they would "call back in 10 minutes" after they figured out what the hold up was. They even went so far as to put Sandi on hold on about call number 12 and then hang up on her. Buh-bye Roto Rooter.

The plumber I called the next day was there within a hour and a half to wade through the mess, give me advice on toilet paper (don't use Quilted Northern, Charmin, or my personal favorite- Cottonelle) and the wisdom of not flushing the supposedly flushable tampon. Just the conversation I want to have at my kitchen table with a complete stranger.

The sad part? I really enjoyed the company...

Now the professional cleaners are downstairs, to the tune of somewhere near $700, and the seasoned (69 year-0ld) cleaner is breaking in his young side kick on his first ever sewage clean-up. There is a lot of bitching going on down there. It pretty unprofessional but I don't really blame him. Although it is nice to have someone else cleaning up the mess around here. I offered to make him coffee but maybe java a poop don't mix.

The aforementioned senior citizen cleaner was giving me some life advice this morning as I was starting the pellet stove. He is a cheery fellow who is wearing a surprisingly nice white collared shirt for today's job. He was telling me about appreciating having a job and just taking the massive clean-up one section at a time, yada yada. Maybe I should quit therapy and have him clean for me and talk to me instead- get two birds with one stone.