Column: Something About Nothing, by Julie Seedorf

It was one of those weeks, you know the kind, it was a good day/bad day kind of week. We all have those weeks where things happen and we wonder what is coming next.

The truck broke down on the way home from Valleyfair and had to be towed home by a tow truck. Some family members got caught by a mudslide on a mountain. The upstairs bathroom sewer pipe between the floors of my two bathrooms let loose and flooded my downstairs bathroom. Upstairs floor has to be replaced; downstairs ceiling, wallpaper and cabinets have to be replaced along with all new plumbing. We can’t get a plumber for a month or two because they are so busy. While we were cat-sitting we dropped the glass coffee pot and broke it.

My husband was sure all this bad luck was because he broke a mirror in the upstairs bathroom a few weeks ago.

Yes, that was a lot of things breaking, and if you can’t cry you might as well laugh. This all came after the storms and the water in the basement a few weeks ago, so as things were also breaking, we were loading a Dumpster with the waterlogged things, and since we had the Dumpster we decided to carry the cleaning to the garage. It was a full Dumpster.

That was the bad, and we could choose to dwell on that, but there was a lot of good in the week, too.

The good news: I didn’t fall out of the roller coaster. We spent part of the week with our grandkids, and in spite of being bone weary tired from the fun and the disasters, time with our grandchildren and son are always priceless.

Tearing down the cupboards and ceiling in the bathroom revealed a tall ceiling and we perhaps can sheetrock and the changes we can make will give me a chance to use my creative abilities to redesign some of the elements of our bathroom. It was something I wanted to do but couldn’t justify tearing up a perfectly good bathroom. The upstairs bathroom also will get a much-needed overhaul, and we also will replace the broken bathroom mirror. That might bring back our luck. My husband might disagree because it will bring him a great deal of work. That’s what happens when you break a mirror — the bad luck is that your wife finds seven years of work for you to do in the house.

My family members that encountered the mudslide on a mountain were safe. The garage and the basement are clean.

Another good thing that happened in the same week is that Cozy Cat Press published my book “Granny Hooks A Crook.” It was fun reviewing the paperback version and downloading the Kindle version from Amazon.

Yes, it was a week of strange things breaking down. The good news is that we decided to go with the flow and didn’t let all the things that happened get us down. Things can be replaced and repaired, but the important things in life such as spending time with family and my family being safe made us feel very blessed.

As my character in my book, Granny (Hermiony Vidalia Criony Fiddlestadt) would say; “Life is full of hooks and crooks; it’s which choice you make when you are deciding what to hook with that crook.”

 

Wells resident Julie Seedorf’s column appears every Monday. Send email to her at thecolumn@bevcomm.net.