An awful day

Today was an awful day. There was disappointment, discouragement, frustration, anger, and weariness. There were barf buckets and fussy, teething babies. There was bad news on top of bad news. There was grime, waste water everywhere, and dusts of both saw and plaster. There were concerns about finances and hastily prepared meals from prepackaged boxes. There was, for the eighth day, no use of our only shower or upstairs sink and toilet.

But there was also Plumber #5. God bless Plumber #5. He came to our house multiple times and rolled with the numerous surprises revealed by our uncovered pipes. He searched for the right equipment outside of his own. He saw my husband attempting to defray costs by helping where he could—while toting around a miserable teething baby and trying to keep a 3 year old from throwing up all over the living room. Plumber #5 watched all of this silently. And when it came time to go tonight, Plumber #5 took next to nothing for two days of hard work.

There were tears from more than one adult after he left.

And then, tonight, there was a shower taken in our very own house. And there wasn’t any dripping.

<fist pump> <jumping for joy> <fall to knees weeping>

So today really, maybe, wasn’t quite such an awful day.

Today’s 1%: For most of the day I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to come up with one. But tonight, in my half-kitchen (the other half is in pieces from the Plumbing Fiasco of 2015), I made homemade barbecue sauce for our first Date Night In tomorrow night. It called for ground coriander, but I only had whole. I was ready to omit—which would have been the only ingredient missing for the entire meal—but then I remembered that I owned a Magic Bullet, long forgotten about. Included in the Magic Bullet was a never-used blade for grinding. I dug it out of the pantry, dusted it off, and it worked! Ground coriander was added and the sauce tastes great! I’m sure a ½ teaspoon of ground coriander made all of the difference… ;)

Did I mention I took a shower tonight?!?!?!?