It's Relative

Some days start out innocently enough only to blossom into disaster before your very eyes. Yesterday was kind of like that.

Often I stay up too late and I had played one too many video games the night before, making that knock at the door at 8 a.m. seem evil. Guys had come to bury the cable at our new house but when they arrived, they found our lift station oozing sewage and that changed their plans. And mine. Before yesterday, I had no idea what a lift station was or why it was that I wanted one.

Just about the time I was figuring this out, the plumber (my new best friend) was figuring out how to get rid of it. "Sh** don't flow uphill" is the saying and, unless we want to spend a lot of money quite often, the saying is accurate in our case. To achieve the coveted downhill flow will involve excavation and roughly two years' worth of college tuition, but flushing toilets is rapidly climbing my personal "top ten" list of fun things to do. Like so many things that we take for granted, when we can't do it anymore, we realize just how much we enjoy doing it. Right about now, I'd pay pretty much anything for that privilege.

As soon as I broke the news to Dad that we wouldn't be able to flush our toilets for the next three days, he started packing up. He's decisive like that, able to make snap decisions and act upon them. I envy that trait. In ten minutes flat, my dad and his wife were in the car driving with ease up our remarkably steep driveway. 

I ought to give my little brother a heads-up call, but why spoil the surprise?