How to lose your mind

Ever wanted to test your patience, sanity and ability to love your husband and children despite all sorts of weird circumstances?

No?

Clever you.

I, however, appear to enjoy walking on the wild side. My current plan, which you are welcome to modify to your own life as needed, is as follows:

1) Lose your water pressure. In fact, better yet, have your well run dry, which appears to be our dilemma. (This, however, makes no sense given how it has rained pretty consistently all spring and summer.) But in any case, this means
a) no dishwasher
b) not being able to do laundry until it's fixed (. . . !)

2) Have a newborn. Y'know, to feel sleep deprived and all.

3) Take said newborn AND a two-year old on a road trip from Nova Scotia to Ontario. What would normally be about 16 hours of driving suddenly becomes much, much more.

4) When you arrive at your destination, be sure to stay for a whole week at a camp without electricity or running water. Call it your "vacation" for the sheer shock value.

5) When said "vacation" is over, take the newborn and the two-year-old on a airplane. But this time, do it without your husband. Smile sweetly at the "wow, you have your hands full!" comments. Then say "Duh!" under your breath, as two kids + two hands = hands full, literally.

6) Enjoy a week of post-vacation hang-over with your two very young kids, but no husband, as he is away for work.

Comments

  1. Julie CulshawJuly 20, 2011 at 3:03 PM

    Oh I can relate to this one. Years ago, in Ontario, Nick was away and we were renting a run-down house in the country and subletting our apartment in Ottawa. Nick went to Manitoba to work (= get real money, not just student stipend) and we had a drought. The well went dry. I was alone with Rebecca who was 3 and Elena who was 6 months. Cloth diapers too.
    I could only pray.
    Imagine my surprise as word got out at the post office about the dry well, and a neighbour up the road drove in with a 500 gallon tank of rain water plus 2 barrels to collect water off the roof. He was spending the summer on his vacation farm and collected the water just for the heck of it.
    That water lasted until end of summer, Nick's return and our journey back to conveniences in Ottawa.
    I remember that summer with great fondness - despite the physical difficulties, I lived in a peace that was sent by God and being in the quiet surroundings of rural Ontario.
    Survive you will and you will grow stronger too. Plus it makes for wonderful stories, doesn't it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. ElenaJuly 20, 2011 at 4:15 PM

    Oh, Jenna. This is all preparing you for Cana! Wells are a problem. Ours in Renfrew was below water-pressure standard and constantly ran dry with too much laundry etc. Is it the pump?
    I do not remember the summer that my mother recounted but I do know that she remembers it with great affection. I, to the best of my knowledge, emerged unscathed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownJuly 22, 2011 at 10:17 AM

    I'm so jealous, Jenna.

    ReplyDelete

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