Processing and Calculating The Week.

The past few days have felt like a strange twilight zone where everything comes in extreme highs and lows in an odd string of events. I think if I made a super-geeky-yes-I’m-an-Accountant-what-of-it-balance-sheet for the week, it would be on the plus side, but I’m not sure until I process it all…

Monday: I got this unbelievable urge to clean up Ali’s living room toy corner (a tinge of nesting maybe??). She’s quite the little hoarder, and has mixed up every possible combination of toys into a jumbled, unplayable mess, so she’s been actually playing with all of like 5% of the monstrous mess that is her corner.

And although I’m all about getting a kid to help with their junk issues, a total toy overhaul is just not one of those things that you want to do WITH your kid, because then she rediscovers every toy and can’t stand to part with a single one.

So Chris, after realizing how much it was under my skin to get done, suggested that we do it together the next night during election returns – perfect combination.

Tuesday Night: Wow, did the organization process become a mess:

(And that was just half of it, since I don’t have a wide-screen camera lens and all.)

But, besides the extreme therapeutic satisfaction that came from getting everything in a properly organized and sorted through manner, I got an extra reward.

I found this at the very bottom of her toy box:
My heart has been painfully distressed for about three months, ever since it went missing. It was a very special, romantic gift from Chris, and I had laid it on the counter one day after Church. It disappeared. We rooted through the garbage – no luck. I grilled Ali, and at first she said she hadn’t seen it, but then when I showed her the matching earrings, she confessed.

“I took it. I broke it. But I don’t know what I did with it.”

I bribed her with all sorts of wonderful promises if she could find it, but no luck – she just didn’t remember.

I searched high and low through all of her things, but apparently my search never made it to the bottom of the bottomless pit that was her toy box.

Ah, the reward of finding it – and it wasn’t even broken!! I was ecstatic the rest of the night.

Wednesday Morning: Chris discovers a water leak. The dressing room floor is wet, and the living room ceiling has a slowly growing water stain.

Nothing distresses my husband more than a water leak. Nothing.

(Except maybe squirrels.)

I promise to schedule a time for a plumber to come out when I’ll be at home, and we both dread the possible end result.

Then I head to my doctor’s appointment. Wearing a sleeveless dress, thanks to my last horrifically traumatic weigh-in.

But it paid off – my weigh-in was completely redeemed, and so I rewarded myself with a Reese’s Cup.

And then – as if the visit couldn’t get any better after being four pounds less than that obviously erroneous former weigh-in, the doctor confirmed that Noah had, indeed, finally flipped – no more breech!!

Who gives a rip about plumbing problems?

Oh yeah – me. And Chris.

Before I left the hospital, I went ahead and filled out my pre-admission paperwork – and signed so many papers that I think I might have refinanced our house at the same time. But my favorite blank to fill in was under “Section II: Spouse Information” – question five asked “Relationship to Patient.”

Seriously?

Like, other than “Spouse”?

I know it’s Alabama, but still…

Back home. Back to the Plumbing Fiasco.

To find the leak, Plumber had to cut a hole into our Living Room Ceiling – nothing could be more horrific.
And as if that wasn’t traumatic enough, the cutting of that diagnostic hole cost us $474 more – before the leak was ever touched.

Two seconds after cutting the sad, sad hole, he said “Yup, there’s a leak. I’ll now have to cut a hole in your bathroom cabinet.”
Chris and I sat in dread as the number of holes in our house and the dollar signs rose.

I couldn’t stand it any longer. I told Chris that I believed that this plus all the repairs afterward would, for the first time ever, get us over our homeowner’s insurance deductible and that we should, most definitely, start a claim. And so, to prevent further psychological trauma, I left the scene of the crime and began the conversation with State Farm.

Thursday: Leak now fixed, damage all known, so now it was time to finish our claim and get State Farm to send us a check.

I ADORE State Farm.

Instead of adding “Carpet Cleaning” into our settlement for our now-stained dressing room carpet, they figured in “New Carpet for the whole dressing area”.

Instead of adding “Fix hole in vanity” into our settlement, they figured in “Replace entire 6.5 foot, two sink vanity”.

They asked questions such as, “How much time did you spend sopping and mopping? We will pay you for your time because we would have paid someone to come out and do it for you.”

And so, after all of the claim dust settled, and even after our deductible, thanks to the wonderful, lovely, adorableness of State Farm, instead of the dreadful dollar amounts Chris and I were discussing the night before, we are now looking like we’ll come out ahead, even after all the repairs are finished.

And, in even more amazing fashion, I filed the claim yesterday morning, and got the check in the mail TODAY.

Thank you, State Farm. I dearly, dearly adore you.

So, to sum up,

• Ali has a nicely organized toy corner (for at least the week)
• Found my precious necklace
• Noah finally flipped
• My weight was redeemed
• Plumbing fiasco scared the wits out of us, but then
• Plumbing fiasco turned into a net credit, rather than a huge out-of-pocket expense
• I love State Farm.

Yes, this week’s balance sheet turned out pretty good.