Three Years ago today, Nature Boy and I were escaping the gray and dreary Upstate New York winter…
Literally.
We moved to Cooperstown from Northern California, and after five months of gloomy weather we were going through serious sun-shine deprivation.
It wasn’t pretty.
You know what they say Seasonal Affective Disorder? It’s all true and I was a good case study. You need sunshine to be a happy camper. And in case you didn’t know it, there isn’t a lot of sunshine in Upstate New York between November and April.
Mud? Yes. Snow? Yes. Sunshine? No.
So we escaped. We fled back to Chico where there are palm trees, and friends, and Chipotle.
Which is why it was three years ago today that we were lounging at the side of a pool when my cell phone rang. My older sister was calling with some news that was going to turn our lives inside out.
Our ugly duckling farmhouse, with horrible pink paint, mind numbingly ugly bathroom fixtures, and a God-forsaken heating system, had one more surprise for us… really bad plumbing.
Three thousand miles to the east the pipes in our farmhouse kitchen had burst. And for two days gallon after gallon after gallon of water had been pouring into the first floor of our house.
Kinda put a damper on our vacation.
We came home to this…
This…
Some of this…
A bit of this…
And a whole lot of this…
I wish I could say that I handled it joyfully, with grace, determination and faith….
But then I couldn’t tell you that I had a little breakdown and started crying in the paint aisle of Home Depot. (It wasn’t pretty. I think I scarred several burly working men for life.)
I couldn’t tell you about the dust and the discouragement and the four week stretch that I fed Nature Boy frozen pizza for dinner. every. single. night.
And I couldn’t tell you about how I strategically packed my entire wardrobe behind the mattress, kitchen sink, and refrigerator, requiring me to climb over all three of them in order to get dressed each morning.
Truly my finest hour.
But what I can tell you is that we survived it.
We worked hard and stayed up late. We painted and sanded and painted and scraped and painted a little bit more for weeks on end. We bonded over wooden floors, window panes and our new (old) kitchen sink.
And somewhere along the way we fell in love with our ugly duckling farmhouse.
And today, three years later, she’s turned into a swan.
And what about you? What brought you JOY this week? What put a smile on your face, or a leap in your step? Willing to tell us about it?
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If you don’t have a blog, please share your thoughts in the comment section below… it’s wonderful to read them!!
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