A Bad Thing

From time to time, my life is not all roses and chocolate.  Sometimes bad things happen to me.  Things that make me angry, things that make me sad, and even things that discourage me.  Last week, a bad thing happened.  For those of you that have a weak stomach, you might want to stop reading now.  I have forewarned you.

 

Last Thursday started off rather well.  Everyone in our household was ecstatic because it was the last day of school—no more teachers, no more books—you know the routine!  The kids finished their last papers and tests of the year, and we put away our pencils with a huge smile and a sigh of relief.  Summer vacation has arrived!

I spent a good part of the day baking and decorating Abigail’s birthday cake, while the kids rode bikes and played out in the oppressive heat.

 

I must mention that living in an RV has its share of challenges.  One of those is the need for dumping our sewage regularly.  Our trailer has two bathroom areas, although only one shower, so there is a sink and toilet in the kids’ bathroom as well as in the main bathroom of the trailer.  This is wonderful because it means that I can finally take a shower without someone pounding on the door as soon as I turn on the water.  However, it also means we have twice as much trouble to dump, since there are two “black water” tanks to empty.  Also, the children have not yet deciphered the meaning of , “Don’t use that toilet—it’s full!”  On more than one occasion now, they have “forgotten” and caused a major problem by  overfilling the black water tank.  I never understood how they did this until last Thursday night.

 

The tank was full, and they had been good about going in the church bathroom, since they were forbidden to use their own.  I walked into their room in the afternoon, and it really smelled terrible.  I opened the toilet lid, and saw, to my great dismay, things that I will not mention here.  Then the inquisition began.  Who had violated the rule?  One guilty party spoke up, but there was more than one person involved, I was sure, just because of the volume of black water visible in the bowl.

 

I informed my husband that he would need to try out his new macerator pump that evening.  This pump was given rave reviews on all the camping websites because of its ability to chop the sewage into tiny pieces and shoot the offending substance through a garden hose into a sewer cleanout.  This was an ideal solution for our current situation, since moving our trailer closer to the sewer cleanout at the church was an impossibility, due to the fact that another RV was parked between us and the cleanout.  No problem, we thought.  My husband hooked up the pump and turned it on, and we blissfully in the kitchen talking, when all of a sudden, he shoved me aside, ran into the back bathroom, and then headed for the door like a shot.  I hurried into the bathroom to see what was wrong, and to my absolute horror, I saw that the black water had not only backed up into the toilet and was overflowing, it had also backed up into the sink, and was now pouring over the edge like a dark version of Niagara Falls!  I screamed and started searching for old towels to sop up the mess and keep it from seeping into the carpet in the kids’ room.  I cried, and gagged at the stench, while my husband frantically worked to disconnect the pump that was filling the tank even more.  It was a bad thing… a terrible thing… probably the worst thing that has ever happened inside the walls of our trailer.  But we survived.

 

Several hours later, we went to bed.  We had the inestimable  blessing of having some friends who were able and willing to help us.  Those are true friends indeed.  The bathroom was clean, the towels were in the trash, the ventilation fans were running, and the kids were asleep in the living room.  We figured out that the kids’ sink drains into the black water tank, not into the gray water tank like ours does.  (For the uninitiated, gray water is water that drains from the shower, sinks, and washing machine.  Black water is sewage.)  That is the reason the tank was so full.  The kids had been washing their hands and brushing their teeth, further filling the tank.  We are not yet sure why the pump filled the tank more instead of emptying it, but when we tried it on the front black water tank, it worked just fine.  We still sat and watched the toilet, just to be sure. 

 

Yes, bad things happen.  Things go wrong, sometimes at an alarming rate, but we can survive.  So, just relax and remember that  you are not alone!

Leftovers

Last week, I cleaned out my refrigerator.  It was a chore that badly needed to be done.  Yuck!  I don’t like doing it, but every so often, it slaps me in the face when I open the door, and says, “Yoo hoo!  We’re still here!  When are you going to clean out this mess?”  I sigh in resignation and begin peeking and peering into sealed containers that lurk in the dark corners of my refrigerator.  It is a dangerous job, but someone has to do it!

I will say that we usually do not have leftovers very long, due to the fact that Josiah is like a human food disposal.  Occasionally, however, something will slip through the cracks, or is shoved to the back of the fridge where it sits in silence until the day of reckoning. 

I do not mind eating leftovers – it keeps me from having to make an entire meal at lunch time the next day.  Some days, it is a regular smorgasboard around our house – venison, spaghetti, soup, little bits of this and that.  Everyone gets their favorite meal at one time! Yay!  However, I know people who would dive in front of a speeding subway train before putting food on the table for a second time!  Well, it takes all kinds, you know!  :) 

I was thinking as I cleaned out my fridge about leftovers and how they relate to life.  We are encouraged from a young age to give our very best to God – our whole life.  Sometimes, people do that by dedicating their life to God and His service.  Others are sometimes not so fortunate as to have older family and friends teaching them to give themselves totally to God, and a great part of their life is spent in the world before, or sometimes even after, salvation.  The good news is, God still loves leftovers.  I do not mean to be sacriligious when I say this.  God will take those leftovers and He can still transform them into something wonderful!  Don’t lurk in the background – come out into the light of His mercy and grace and allow yourself to be used! 

Cleaned Out

I have been a little under the weather this week, and therefore, decided that I could exert my limited energies to doing some long-delayed chores in the trailer.  One of these was getting rid of the sock box.  You may wonder what a sock box is, but I know you have one, too, although it may not be called a sock box.  When we transferred our belongings from our previous trailer to the new trailer, there was significantly less storage space.  Due to this, my sock collection (which is not really that impressive – maybe a dozen pair) did not fit in the drawer with all my other unmentionables, which will continue to be unmentioned…  I decided I would just stick the socks in the top half of an apple box until I could find a place to put them.

Fast forward seven months.  The sock box was still there, sitting in front of the dresser, and impeding not only our access to the drawers, but also blocking the narrow walkway at the foot of the bed.  Although it was still called the sock box, it had grown in usefulness, and now held not just socks, but hosiery, jewelry, pens, papers, photos, picture frames, important papers, excess folded laundry, and a few sweaters.  Suffice it to say, the sock box had become a major pain in the foot, probably due to the number of times I kicked it while trying to squeeze past to the other side of the bed.  It had to go.

In reality, sorting through the box was not nearly as bad as I had dreamed.  It took about thirty minutes to clean out the clutter and I was on to a much more formidable task—the kid’s toy box!



I am a nice mom, and so the toys all survived the purge.  However, the great majority of them will be put in storage until we have space for the kids to play with them.  The children are still amazed at how nice their room looks without toys strewn from one end to the other.  They still have plenty of toys to spread around, but the ones they rarely play with have gone on vacation for a while.  Maybe permanently! Mwahahahahaha!  Here are the toys I decided to send on an all-expense paid vacation to the storage unit!  Impressive, huh?

What task do you dread more than any other?  Take the challenge today and tackle it—you can get rid of your “sock box,” too!  :)