What the hell was that??

As an adult you realize the older you get the more tired you are.

Having a child takes this extreme to a whole new level.

Throw in a few more kids and everything becomes a blur.

I have experienced many forms of sleep deprivation. Falling asleep rocking a baby, falling asleep laying with my older kids. Basically given the opportunity I become a voluntary narcoleptic.

No amount of coffee can save you. Cup after cup until your hands are shaking and it’s only 1:37pm.

Now here’s the strange part. Exhausted insomnia. Sometimes I get that. Burning eyes but the brain just won’t shut down. No matter what your mind will not stop wandering.

Here I am laying in the dark. It’s about 12:30am and I’m the only one awake. I’m sifting through the dusty corners of my mind when I hear…

B o o m

I lunge upright in bed on high alert. What was that sound? My husband is fast asleep. I strain my hearing to tune into the sounds of little people, but there are none. No screams, no little hurried feet with authority, no dogs barking.

I’m confused. This was not the sound of a child. The dogs still haven’t started barking.

Did that even happen? Have hallucinations overcome me? Is someone breaking in? Why didn’t the dogs bark?

BOOM!

N!!! WAKE UP!!!

Did you hear that?

His glassy eyes look at me perplexed. Sounded like a car hit the house…

Words are frantically spilling out.

“I heard a sound and wasn’t sure if I heard it and the dogs didn’t bark so I thought I was crazy and then I heard it again only louder but the dogs still didn’t bark and no kids are here.” I’m ranting in run-on jibberish.

What do you want me to do?

Me suddenly pondering if “protect” was somewhere in the vows??

“Go check!”

“You want me to go check?” He repeats back like I didn’t just say that!

“YES!” I whisper yell at him.

He quietly tiptoes off in the darkness.

I’m alone, freaking out in my head.

What if someone broke in, killed the dogs and he’s next. My babies! OMG.

Paranoia closes in on me.

“I didn’t see anything, the dogs are fine.” He assures.

I don’t believe him. What made those 2 loud booms? He knows I’m not satisfied.

“I’ll go look again.” He says.

I’m alone in the dark again and it’s suffocating waiting for his return.

The longest 6 minutes later he again assures me all is right in the world.

He tucks himself back into bed. Tells me he loves me, kisses me again, rolls over and is snoozing before his head hits the pillow.

It annoys me that he has the gift of awake to sleep in 3 seconds.

Thoughts crowd my mind about the booms, but I finally fall asleep.

The sun rises on another day. The morning hustle and shuffle begins.

For the most part all is right in the world.

Start the coffee.

Make breakfast.

Go to wash my hands and…my sink!

Where the hell is my sink?

Everything is here but the kitchen sink!

“How did you miss this last night??”

“No one thinks to check the sink Heather.”

It fell off! I mean the whole GD sink fell off!?

Well I suppose that explains the boom.

My mind cannot believe my lying eyes. I look down on it horrified. I dare myself to check under and look in the cabinet.

And there it is folks. That blinding shining lightbulb has just been turned on.

Boom #1 was the sink falling off.

BOOM #2 was all the plumbing and pipes breaking off making the entire setup collapse.

I look at my husband wild eyed in disbelief. He’s smiling because he already traveled this road to hell.

He says to me “You have no idea how bad it was.”

I’m laughing. Traumatized laughing. Complete psychotic break laughing.

“How bad?”

Now I forgot I made us a lovely dinner salad the night before, complete with homemade salad dressing. I’m basically Martha Stewart minus the jail time and with a potty mouth.

“All that salad dressing exploded everywhere. It was on every dish in the sink and when the pipes broke it ran all over the inside of the cabinet. It was disgusting. So greasy, like someone put motor oil on everything and then didn’t give me a sink to wash it in. I must have washed my hands 37 times.” He shudders as he relives the tale.

Now I looked in that cabinet and it was “man clean” which is the basic equivalent to a “rough in” clean. I was, however grateful for that.

He even took all the dishes to the bathroom sink and roughed those in for me too.

We went a week without a kitchen sink. I promise hustling dishes for a family of 5 to a tiny sink sucks. Sucks bad.

I have never appreciated a kitchen sink the way I do now. But just when we got it up and running, the sink stopped draining.

Dish washing in the bathroom resumed. Husband takes apart the pipes and snakes, and snakes, and snakes, and nothing. Hunh!??

Nothing. Nada. No deal.

Plumbers come out. They cannot get it to drain. A whole 2 hours later they are talking about the pipes in the slab. I cannot even think of the impending destruction. I’m ready to throw a full on ugly cry toddler meltdown.

Then bingo, lines clean. Panic ends.

Thank you. Thank you. I am certain I deserve a break.

Dish washing can again resume in the now sacred kitchen sink.

Maybe, Maybe 3 days passes and the faucet won’t quite shut off. It’s like the sink is now cursed and I’m having none of it. Faucet is running all over and sending me into a blind rage.

Finally husband takes apart the faucet to fix it and now it won’t turn off. Certainly I’m in hell? Hi, welcome to the seventh circle. Here’s your name, we’ve reserved you a seat.

He tweaks it gingerly back to it’s normal level of dysfunction and orders the part.

He shimmies the new part in and we can move on.

All I have to say is so help me God if anything else happens to that sink I’m gonna burn this place down.