A rude awakening

I still plan to do a Christmas wrap-up post, but first I need to report on the events of the morning.

This morning, I was awakened at 7:05 when Evan climbed into the bed with Pressley and me. I thought his arrival meant all four of us were in the bed together, which never lasts more than a few moments, but I was still hoping I could sleep for a couple more minutes.

Next thing I knew, I heard Corin bellowing at Evan from a place that was definitely not the other side of the bed. As I struggled to understand with my cobwebby brain what was going on, the bellowing turned to me. "AMY!!", it went, "We have a crisis.... of EPIC proportions!"

So, up I jumped and ran down the hall (OK, shuffled quickly) to Evan's bathroom to find water pouring into the hallway. Corin was already on his way to gather up every towel in the house, so I stood there and rubbed my eyes until he returned and we started sopping up water.

To the best of my now-wide-awake-understanding, it happened like this:

Last night we had a babysitter stay with the kids so we could go shopping and out to dinner. While said babysitter was here, the toilet apparently became clogged and nothing was done about it. Probably because Evan didn't alert anyone to the problem. (This assumption is based on plenty of precedent.) Then, when he woke up bleary-eyed this morning, he stumbled into the bathroom, relieved himself, flushed and left the room, not knowing that the water was now rushing out of the toilet.

The part about him not knowing is being assumed after much questioning by the father figure. He swears up and down that he didn't know and his feet were not wet when he left the room. If we find out differently, the punishment will be swift and harsh.

Luckily, Corin had gotten up at 5 a.m. with a headache and was downstairs. He was thus able to hear the running water. He thought Evan had left a faucet running, so he was coming upstairs to fuss at Evan for leaving the faucet on when he discovered the real issue.

All that to say, it could've been much worse if it had gone undetected for any longer. Even with the immediate discovery, the damage was pretty extensive. By the time we got to it, the water had filled the bathroom and run into the hallway onto the hardwood floor and begun entering Evan's carpeted bedroom through both the bathroom doorway and the hallway.

We were able to schedule a steam cleaning for today with the second company I called. Which began a ripple effect. If the company was going to come and steam clean Evan's room, we might as well get the two rugs downstairs cleaned - which cleaning was long overdue. If they were going to clean the carpet in the living room, then the tree would have to come down. We thought about asking them to clean around it or just having a different room cleaned instead, but after careful consideration, I decided the wisest thing to do was just buck up and take down the tree.

Thus, as soon as we finished sopping up water off the bathroom floor and wet-vacuuming the bedroom carpet to the best of our abilities, I began the arduous task of taking the ornaments off the tree. Pressley "helped" (which was stressful), and then Corin came in to take it out to the porch and get the lights off. The minute he put the tree at the curb and brought in the two ornaments we had missed, the lawn refuse truck pulled up and carried it off.

To top it all off, our housekeeper was here today for a regularly scheduled cleaning. She has been a real trooper about working around all the obstacles... from kids that have been cooped up and largely unsupervised all day, to carpet cleaning people and the like. And I have been working like a dog to stay one step ahead of the housekeeper and the carpet people.

I need a nap. It has been quite a day and it is not even 1:00 yet.

Sigh.

(P.S. If this has been the least bit coherent, it is an absolute miracle. This is probably the most stream-of-conscious-post I've written in a while, but I'm too tired to go back and read it to make sure it makes sense. I also don't want to have to re-live it one more time by going back and reading it. So, you get what you get.)

That's all.