Survival Weekend

I start this post slightly dishevelled and confused.  I have been on a survival weekend without even leaving my house.  I shall do my best to explain.

Hubby (whom I have now decided to nickname the Raving Rev) is away at a conference all to do with his training.  I have been left at home alone, yay.  Before leaving the Raving Rev looks at me with great concern on his face, "now are you sure that you are going to be ok on your own?"  I tut, of course I am.  I am a fully grown woman, I think I can manage.  He asks me at least 20 more times and I am beginning to get slightly annoyed that he seems to think that I cannot manage.  His final question to me was more blunt "will you and the house still be in one piece when I get back?"  I glared, what was that supposed to mean?  I am not clumsy like him; I do not break things like him; rant, rant, rant.  He backed off, nodded, gave me a kiss and was on his way.  To add insult to injury my mother also kept texting me and phoning to ask if I would be alright.  What was this?  You would think I was a disaster waiting to happen.  Turns out, I am.  

Saturday morning, after a lovely long lie, I get up and decide that I will wash the dog beds.  The upstairs one was particularly stinky and when I picked it up, to my horror, I found out why.  My beloved little pooch had decided to stash some of his food up there under his bed and it had started growing, arrrgh, gross.  I get it downstairs and in the washing machine.  That was all fine and uneventful.  Then the fun began.  I decided to bath the dog.  I managed to get him into the bath and everything was going well until I pushed him further down the bath so that I could use the shower head on him.  He slipped and couldn't get his footing and was sliding around all over the place.  I was trying to hold him in one hand and the shower head in the other and water and dog shampoo was going everywhere!  I managed to rinse him off and he got out the bath himself and then the delightful drying began.  Fifteen minutes later the dog emerges from the bathroom slightly damp and smelling sweet and I emerge looking like a half drowned rat.  

I went downstairs and decide to wash the other dog bed.  This is a large bed with memory foam insert (gift from parents).  I gather the bed up and I push, heave and squeeze it into the washing machine.  I then stop and have a thought.  I don't really need to wash the inside, just the cover.  I can fabreeze the inside and that will save time drying it.  So I start to pull the bed out of the washing machine.  I pull and I pull and I heave and it is refusing to budge.  I grab a bit of it and give it a massive yank.  The bed stayed put but the washing machine lurched forward.  Thankfully it righted itself and I'm now getting slightly worried because I've got the bed stuck in the washing machine and its not budging.  I sit on the floor, place both feet on the washing machine, grab the cushion and heave with all my might.  On the fourth heave the cushion came flying out of the machine and I went flying backwards and hit my head on the cupboards, ouch.  At least I've freed the cushion, hoorah.  I proudly unzip the cover to retrieve the inside and was met with an explosion of foam.  Apparently the cushion inside is ripped.  I stood there, slightly stunned and confused as bits of foam went hurtling all over the kitchen.  I yanked the cover off and, still with bits of foam in it, shoved it into the washing machine.  I then went about the task of clearing up the foam which the dog thought was great and was spreading it throughout the house, nooooo.  

Whilst gathering up the foam I noticed that the tumble dryer was making a strange noise.  I went to investigate and became concerned that it was about to burst into flames, such was the strange noise it was making.  I noticed the Raving Rev's bag stuffed down the side of it and decide to pull it out in case its that making the noise.  As I pull the bag out, it hooks onto the sliding cupboard we have and pulled it straight out into my face.  I reeled back in shock and hit the back of my head on the cupboard again, owwwwww.  

I am now getting slightly distressed and all this has happened within an hour.  I decide to do some food and settle for the easy option of pasta in a sauce.  It's one of those packet pastas so I can't possible go wrong.  I set about boiling the milk and water.  I stand there watching the saucepan.....nothing.  Sigh.  The saying sprang to mind "a watched kettle never boils" so I grab the local paper and begin reading that.  I stop and check the milk, nothing.  Fine, carry on reading.  Stop and check again, nothing.  Reading, checking, nothing.  Reading, checking, aaarrrgh.  There is now a volcano of milk where there should be a saucepan.  I grab the pan and turn the knob to reduce the heat.  Suddenly I'm aware that I'm standing with the saucepan in one hand and the knob in the other.  That can't be good.  I put the saucepan down, manically shoved the knob at the space where it should be and thankfully, after some 'gentle' persuading, it reattached.  After 40 minutes, I eventually managed to get my pasta that was only supposed to take 6-7 minutes.  

After all this, I decide to dry the dog beds in the tumble dryer and tidy up the rest of the house.  After a bit I become aware that something is not right.  I don't know what it was but I ran to the kitchen to the tumble dryer where all appeared to be fine but I knew something was amiss.  I yanked open the door to discover that rogue foam had entered the tumble dryer, blocked up the filter and was starting to make the dryer overheat, aaargh.  Nearly had a fire, oh good grief.  Then, one of my poor, elderly rabbits took one of his fits.  I grabbed him out of the hutch, brought him round and was just putting him back when our adopted auntie popped in to see me.  I was stood there covered in bedding, hay and rabbit fluff and looking slightly harassed.  Straight away, she checked on the bunny, made sure he was ok and then laughed as I told her about my day.  

Suddenly, I realised why the Raving Rev and my mother were so concerned.  Memories began to flash before my eyes.  Like the time in our last house when I was left alone, the tap in the bathroom kept dripping and wouldn't stop.  I took a hammer to it and it never dripped again.  Didn't work again either until the Raving Rev replaced it.  Or the time I was assembling a cabinet by myself and I couldn't find a bradawl so I used whatever I could find.  Raving Rev came in and I proudly showed off the cabinet.  He was impressed until he spotted my DIY bradawl, apparently it was the thermometer thing for the microwave.  You would stab it in the food and it would tell you if it was done.  Well, by the time I had finished with it, that thermometer was done.  Then there was the time that the chimney caught fire.  I kept calm and went into the kitchen and grabbed one of the saucepans off the side (it was the weekend and I hadn't washed up from the night before tut tut), filled it with water and then went and threw it on the fire.  The chimney fire went out and the whole house turned black/brown.  Raving Rev came downstairs and stared at me whilst I, with a big grin, proudly announced that I had put the fire out.  "You threw it on?  Are you crazy?  It could have exploded into your face!"  Also the saucepan that I used had fat in it which I had also thrown onto the fire, ooops.  The other bit as well was that all the soot and ash had come flying out of the fire and into the house.  My dressing gown was lovely and white at the back and brown all up the front (as was my face).  The dog we had then who was white, as he had been laying down, he had one white side and one brown side.  The house rabbits were covered, the settee, everything.  Ten seconds to put the fire out, five hours to clean the house.  

I think I'm beginning to understand their concern, perhaps I'm not safe to be left alone.  What will I be like in a manse?  Can you imagine me trying to serve tea to visiting parishioners?  Or trying to do a dinner for guests?  Will we all survive?    

Be blessed.

A Comedy of Errors!

Hey there,

I thought that today I would share a bit of my history with you in my 'new' house.  It might give you an idea how crazy my husband and I are (and some crazy people think we're suited to the ministry haha).  The story I'm going to tell you  takes place one night during January 2011.  So grab a cuppa, get comfy and join me in a night now fondly known as 'A Comedy of Errors'.

On this night, the word windy could not describe the weather.  The gales were over 70mph.  It was the kind of stormy night where I was thankful to be curled up infront of the coal fire, nice and dry and warm.....or so I thought.  In the late evening my hubby shouted and informed me that we had a slight problem.  I went through to our hallway and to find that it was flooded!  The wind was so strong that it had pushed the rain through the seals in the door.  It was chaotic with us both running around grabbing the mop and towels and trying desperately to stem the flow of water.  We finally managed to stop the rain coming in and we mopped up the hall and congratulated ourselves on a job well done.  After all the excitement I sat down with a much needed cup of tea and began to relax.  How very silly of me.

Unbeknown to me, hubby darling had gone out into the backgarden to get some more coal for the fire.  Now, for reasons best known to himself, he decided that he would peer around the side of the house to see what the sea was like in the bay.  He peered round the corner, directly into the wind which promptly took away his breath, his slipper and his glasses.  Yes, he had managed to have his glasses blown off his face.  He came hobbling into me (where I was nice and warm and dry) to inform me that he had lost his slipper but found it again but couldn't find his glasses and we had to go outside to find them.  Outside, in the dark, in the rain and 70mph winds?  Of course, in the dark with a hurricane blowing this is what you do.  I think that we must have looked like a couple from a really crazy comedy show.  It was one of those acts that you would not believe people would be stupid enough to do such a thing and yet, there we were. 

So we were out in the dark, where the wind was so loud that I had to shout to be heard, crawling around in a garden bed with a tiny torch looking for a pair of glasses.  I could not help but laugh at the idiocy of the situation.  I was laughing so hard that I nearly fell over, face first into a puddle.  Thankfully, the Lord heard my hysterical (laughter not the other kind) prayers and I found his glasses.   I shouted as loudly as I could to hubby that I'd found them and that I was going in.  I struggled to the backdoor but a strange noise made me turn around.  There was my hubby, stuck in the middle of the road, screaming for help.  How was he stuck?  The wind was so fierce that it was physically pushing back and he couldn't move against it.  There he was, flailing around in the middle of the road, looking like he was trying to walk forward in a wind tunnel.  Ever loving and helpful wife that I am, I crumpled onto the floor in hysterical laughter.  Upon realising that I would be of no help to him, he did the funniest thing I had ever seen.  He did a kind of stuntman leap forward, upon which the wind picked him up and flung him into the fence allowing him to work his way back into the garden.  He heroically picked me up off the floor and flung me through the back door into the kitchen.  Well, that was enough excitement for me.  I crawled through to the frontroom and sat down, still giggling.

Soon it was time for bed and I started to get my pyjamas on.  Suddenly, I heard a choking sound, coughing, felt a freezing cold blast of air and then the fire alarm started screaming.  FIRE!  Aaargh.  I ran out into the hallway only to collide with hubby, which sent me flying onto my backside.  I looked around, in a panic, trying to work out where the fire was.  I saw that the front door was wide open, the dog was thinking of doing a bunk and hubby was bravely brandishing a tea towel.  What was going on?  I looked toward my hubby only to see him in his dressing gown, leaping around like a Morris dancer on speed flinging the tea towel around.  What on earth was he doing?  In between jumps and flicks, he yelled at me that he was trying to shut the alarm up.  It was going off because when he had let the dog outside the wind had created a draught, causing the smoke from the fire to enter the rooms downstairs instead of going up the chimney.  He had opened all the doors and windows trying to let the smoke out which was working but it was also letting the rain in.  In that situation, I did the only thing I could, I laughed.  

I eventually regained composure and offered to help hubby.  I began the manic Morris dancing but unfortunately, I didn't know the dance very well and when I wafted the tea towel at the smoke alarm, the smoke alarm exploded and went hurtling down the stairs, just missing hubby's head.  Ah, that wasn't supposed to happen.  However, the aim was to shut the alarm up, it was quiet, therefore - job done.  The downstairs had turned into a swimming pool and everything smelt of smoke.  What next?  Nothing.  I couldn't take anymore excitement and went to bed, leaving hubby to clear up the swimming pool that he had created.  

So there you are, a glimpse into the stupid antics that are my life.  At some later point I'll share with you the story of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly standoff involving me and some scary poultry.  

Until then, take care and God bless.