Saturday, November 03, 2007

thursday was not so fun though

There we were in the mess that Halloween creates trying to get back to a "normal" week...when Dave inadverdantly found out that the sewage pump for the basement had burned out. When anything with the words "sewage" and "pump" tear up you know that is going to mean big trouble! Thursday was spent in emergency mode with people like the plumber and servpro restoration services. Long story short, we have a basement which has been sterilized and had most contaminents removed (carpet cut out and other fun stuff). We are now onto stage two which involves replacing whole walls, flooring, and a set of cabinets. Honestly, it could have been worse, but the resulting damage will take us a while to fix. Looks like we'll become best friends with the contractors soon.

Dave is back out of town for two whole weeks starting tomorrow night so I do realize how much worse this could have been without him here to keep me level headed. Poor man, he just went to the basement expecting to pick up his laptop computer and discovered the overnight disaster once his feet were wet. Ewwww!

William tried out for basketball this morning. It is the first year that he has qualified for the league. Up until now he has only taken the intro to basketball classes during summer camps. The age category was U8 and that meant that my tall little baby boy was mixed in with 7 and 8 year olds who had played for two years or more. I was so proud of William. He didn't do everything perfectly, but he held it together and managed to do each of the drills requested in fine manner. I could not believe the amount of parental interferance I saw with even the older boys. Some boys would not even take a shot at the basket without looking for their parent's approval nod. Certain dads kept running onto the court to offer advice between turns. For one moment I had the image of those boys as college aged kids trying to make decisions and failing because they had no idea of how to do things on their own. William looked over for a few "thumbs up" motions from me, but other than that he was completely in tune with the rhythm of the drills. I was pretty proud of my new 6 year old.

Today I became aware of just how different the next few years may be with Jordan. We had a hard headed standoff over the need to change clothing for volleyball and the color of a headband. (Her clothes were ones she fell asleep in on Friday night!) Sigh. I suppose I should pick my battles more carefully. In the end she wore a red headband to symbolize her distress with me...and tonight she changed back to a regular headband color before going to dinner showing that she was not mad anymore. Double sigh. Only my eldest child would pick symbolism to show her independance while we were running late to the ymca.

Enjoy that extra hour tonight!

3 comments:

Caroline said...

Yeah, ya gotta love water. Just reading this brought tears to my eyes thinking about all the water problems we have had in this house. Have fun.

Where is Dave heading off to the next 2 weeks?

Congratulations William, basketball is a tough sport,especially with older kids. But it is fun to watch. I have seen parental interference also, gymnastics it is big, I try to sit back and just let Alia and Tommy do what they know how to do, I was no gymnasts when I was a kid so I leave it to their coaches.

Thank also for giving me the heads up with Jordan, I see the standoffs all ready starting here.I will be more aware of what is coming my way and pretty soon, since Alia will be 9 in March.

Claudia said...

We are so sorry about the sewage, etc. The thought of your beautiful house under water makes us weap. Is there anything we can do?

Ann said...

Caroline - Dave will be in Redmond, WA for the next two weeks. He is hoping that he can come home a few days early on the end if all the work gets done. I hate the red-eye flights he has to take from that time zone because he is usually exhausted.

Claudia - Thanks for asking...I suppose you could just listen to me complain for a few weeks and that will be plenty of help. ;-) There's hope...the basement might be even nicer once we finish. I'm afraid that we may have been bitten by the "while we are at it" bug. Know what I mean?