24 hours of fun...

It's been a couple of weeks since I have posted anything, and I have a post of a happier nature half way done, but I thought I would give everyone a laugh and describe our last few days paying special attention to the last 24 hours. Thursday night I grabbed the computer and went to finish the happier blog I mentioned above, but the internet wasn't working. I went into the room where our modem sits and hit the light switch only to discover that we had a partial blackout taking shape. For reasons I can not explain, one circuit coming into the house was dead. This impacted the room with the computer, Sawyer's room, and two-thirds of the kitchen. The only saving grace was that the one-third of the kitchen that worked included the refrigerator. The next morning Ansley woke up and seemed to devine that the microwave was one of the devices temporarily out of order and insisted upon having breakfast foods that required the microwave. The lights were apparently the fault of the electric company as they came by to fix them about an hour before the repairman I called showed up. I believe he was a little frustrated, but he put up with me well, as I learned later in the weekend. We did not realize it at the time, but the breakfast ordeal was the beginning of a game the kids like to play called "Let's push mommy's buttons." In this game, I watch helplessly as the kids turn their mother into a raving lunatic. It was pretty much the theme for Saturday, and I have a feeling all of you reading this with kids know some form of the game. Saturday concluded with Auburn officially claiming the title "worst of the SEC west" with a stellar loss to lowly Arkansas. Sunday, my parents arrived in Rio and Ansley and I picked them up from the airport. Sem problema. Ansley was overjoyed to see them and Sunday was fairly relaxing with a few issues that were not out of the ordinary for any day involving two kids under the age of four. The 24 hours I mentioned officially began at 6:00pm in Rio. I had given Sawyer a bath and was taking Sawyer into his bathroom to brush his teeth. As I took a step into the bathroom, my foot landed with a very wet splash. I should have mentioned a common plumbing feature for houses in Rio - the water tanks for the house are kept in the attic. The floor of the attic is concrete. These two features together mean that the floor of an attic in Brazil will hold an amazing volume of water before any of it spills down below and we had a leak. After throwing Sawyer and his teeth to my mom and grabbing my ladder, I discovered that one of the pipes in our house had probably been leaking since Wednesday. We had our very own lagoa positioned directly over our heads...not very ideal. I started making calls shortly following the discovery to a repairman (he swore he would be at the house first thing in the morning and made certain I knew how to turn off the water to the house...joy!) and one to the owner of the house (whose cell phone was off and not receiving text messages). My parents probably had it worse than Vic and I as they had spent the prior night wedged into an airplane seat pretending like they were going to sleep. They got to stay up two hours later than intended helping Vic and I soak up water, position pots to catch drips and building dams to stop some of the leaks from spreading. The next morning we were still finding leaks and trying to explain to Ansley that, without water, she was not going to get the blueberry pancakes she was certain she was promised. Vic and my mom finally got her into the car and prepared to take her to school when the next event struck. Vic is fairly new to a manual transmission and is accustomed to her car being the way she left it - chiefly in neutral; however, the night before my dad had used her car to run to get ice and left the car the way he is accustomed to leaving a manual - in gear. This meant that as my dad, Sawyer and I were discussing the leak there was suddenly a very audible thunk as Vic started the car with it in gear and without the clutch in. The car gave a tremendous heave forward...straight into the kitchen wall. We are actually lucky that the impact wasn't greater than it was because I believe we were nearly at the walls breaking point. The car was still working and there was no damage other than Vic's nerves (mine were numb at this point). The final straw came when I thought I heard the repairman showing up and went to the front gate only to find a courier waiting for me to sign that he had delivered the fine from the transportation authority here in Rio (the repairman showed up four hours later). Anyway, I hope that our day can put a smile on your face. I'm hoping that when I come back to this post a year from now, I'll be able to laugh at it. I promise a cheerier post later this week dealing with Spring in Rio and some fun times with my parents. Hope everyone is well.