One Thing Leads to Another

I wouldn't believe the following story if it had not happened to me. Our latest tragedy started when I decided to start a load of laundry before dinner, while the hubby went outside to get the barbecue ready for dinner. When I walked into the laundry room I heard what sounded like a waterfall. I looked toward the sound of the water and there in the corner what do I see, but a stream of water falling down from the ceiling. I handled the situation quite well I must say. I went back upstairs, took a tranquilizer and then called my husband and told him we had an emergency.

We found the source of the leak pretty quickly. The pipe from the dishwasher broke off the drain. Of course this meant in addition to the flood in the basement, there was a flood under the sink in the kitchen. We started cleaning up in the kitchen. Took everything out of the cabinet, washed it, dried it, put it in a safe place, and washed and dried the cabinet. Then we went down stairs to clean up the basement. We were just finishing when suddenly I started hearing dripping water again. No flood this time. Just the skies opening, cancelling our barbecue.

Two days later, I'm home cleaning up after the plumber fixed the drain and all of a sudden I hear a buzzing. It sounds like it is coming from the door bell. I go to the door, but there is no one there and the bell is not stuck, but the buzzing continues. I called a neighbor and after banging all the paint off the doorbell, which was flying all over the room that had just been cleaned, we found that the doorbell must have shorted out. No matter what we did the buzzing continued. Since we could not stop it, we disconnected it.

A few days later, we finally find the time to get a new doorbell. Of course, this could not go smoothly either. The house is old and some of the electrical wiring has never been upgraded. The wiring to the doorbell is some of that wiring. Although the package said it would take 30 minutes to install, we were at if for over an hour. We finally got it hooked up and as we were cleaning up noticed that all of the cleaning supplies from under the sink, had not been put back yet. So we decide to "finish up the kitchen." We put down new contact paper, and as I lifted the first item off the floor to hand to the hubby to put away... Hmm... What is that brown liquid on the floor? After moving a few more items we found that a can of soda, stored next to where we placed all the cabinet items, must have had a pinhole leak. There is root beer soda everywhere!

With that we start to wash and dry all the items from under the sink again. We now have some of the cleanest cleaning supplies in NY! Then we washed and dried all of the other items that got wet. And of course, we don't want to attract ants, so the floor had to be washed.

Now I recognize that none of this was a major tragedy. And I know I should be happy that nothing of value was ruined. But just once, I would like to have one problem at a time. I would like to start one project and at least finish that project before the next catastrophe hits. I actually hesitate to start any projects for fear of what else we will find, or what else will happen as a result. Yes, I'm sure in the future I will look back on this and find it funny, but right now it just seems like there is always a tragedy waiting to happen.