Winning, Duh.

What a fantastic week I have been having! Simply beyond my wildest dreams. Really, the wonderfulness of each day has just compounded the cumulative joy coursing through my veins. Clearly, I am winning.

On Sunday morning, Future Husband and I managed to carve out a full two hours together. Seeing as I have barely laid eyes on him since that miraculous accomplishment, I remember those hours with a kind of nostalgic fondness. Looking back, I'd say it was foolish of us to squander our time lingering over a leisurely breakfast and talking about the future. What we should have been doing is drafting and running through a family haz mat plan , or boning up on our animal emergency triage skills. (It will be clear momentarily that I've just made an unfortunate pun; let's not get ahead of ourselves.). But no, we chose to devote two costly hours to speaking in full sentences, completing thoughts, and daring to dream. What can you do? What's done is done.

The weekend had gotten off to a bit of a rocky start, so I suppose we thought we deserved the break. We've been having some trouble with our washing machine, you see. About a week earlier, it went crazy and flooded a third of our newly finished basement. It seemed odd, since the washing machine does not even reside on the side of the basement that we finished, that it should deposit so much water onto the floor that it reached across the stairwell to be absorbed by the new carpet. Also, no soap. The final drain cycle, we supposed.

So we had begun the clean up process, called the washing machine repair people, missed being home in time to meet them during the appointed four hour window in the middle of the day, watched the laundry pile achieve the mountainous stage, banned all Tornado friends from visiting our house, and relocated Fifth Grader's chinchilla to higher ground in the first floor bathroom. Chinchilla did not care for her relocation. On Friday night, she decided to climb the side of her cage, possibly looking for a way out. She has very small toes. She lodged one of her very small toes in the corner of her cage, and hung there until Saturday morning when Fifth Grader came to say good morning. She then freaked out while Fifth Grader and I worked to free her. Which we did - free her - but not her toe. It broke off.

Cut to Fifth Grader, chinchilla and I rushing off to the animal hospital, chinchilla's wounded foot wrapped in a washcloth. Slow motion through three hours while chinchilla undergoes surgery to reconstruct her toe with what bone and flesh remains; vet explains painkiller and antibiotic administration requirements to an 11 year old girl; and three hundred dollars is extracted from my checking account. Fifth Grader also briefly complained during this experience that her knee was hurting her. "Huh," I think I said. Then I took them home, collected Seventh Grader, and sped off to spend some more money on lacrosse equipment.

If we leap from Spendthrift Saturday to just after our leisurely breakfast on Sunday, we will see Fifth Grader lovingly doling out chinchilla meds while slightly whimpering, "My knee hurts more than yesterday." If we then skip ahead slightly more, to about an hour after I (again) discounted her complaints of pain, we will begin to notice a very unpleasant aroma wafting up from the just dried basement. If we investigate this horrid smell, we find that incredibly stinky water is gushing into the basement through a hole in the wall, once again flooding both sides and this time getting the job done with finality.

Turns out, the washing machine is fine.

The septic tank? Not so much.

It's all pretty much a blur since then. Moments of awesomeness have included an evening at the laundromat, more money spent on more lacrosse equipment, the appearance and advancement of fever and cough in Seventh Grader, spilling Rodent Motrin on the sleeve of my "dry clean only" blouse, and...I know I'm forgetting something...oh! I did finally get fed up with Fifth Grader walking like Frankenstein's monster and simpering about what was OBVIOUSLY growing pains. To prove my point, I took her to see her doctor on Tuesday after dinner. After examining the little hypochondriac, the doctor bandied about comforting words like "MRI" and "orthopedic doctor", something about "possibly going in with a scope and cleaning out" her knee.

"SEE?" Fifth Grader practically screamed at me.

So right now I have to go check Seventh Grader's temperature. It was down to 100 this morning. Then I guess I better schedule that orthopedic appointment.