Momentary Panic!

DAY TWENTY-FOUR Well, this has been an interesting day so far! Paul went off to work in Jackson early, Jenny took Max to his day-care group with Laura and then went on to the ranch, and Ellen and I had the place to ourselves. A quiet, lovely morning to lie in bed, read, do stuff on the Internet, whatever. Ellen reported that that dripping I might have heard earlier was in fact frost, melting off the roof. "Uh-oh," I thought. I knew I had put Jenny's little tomato plants out on the deck yesterday so they could get more sun, but had forgotten to bring them in last night. I hadn't really anticipated getting frost on June 15th! But when I went downstairs, and sure enough, it looked like they had all been nipped. Oh dear! Then I went into the kitchen to fix myself some breakfast, and in cleaning up, I used the garbage disposal. As soon as I turned it on, there was loud "metal-on-metal" noise! I turned it off, reached inside, and pulled out the metal paddle from the bread-making machine (battered but ok). Someone had evidently cleaned out the pan, and hadn't noticed that the paddle had fallen out and gone down the drain into the disposal. OH DEAR!! I ran water and turned on the disposal again to see if it was okay, and it seemed to be working. Whew!

I went upstairs and reported all this to Ellen, who said she was probably to blame about the disposal - she's the one who had earlier cleaned out the pan. I went downstairs again and noticed that the rug in front of the sink was very wet. Hmmm, had I done that? I opened the door under the sink and was shocked to find water everywhere. Then I saw why - the pipe connecting the disposal to the drain pipe had sheared off at the disposal. Evidently when the disposal encountered the metal paddle, it vibrated so violently, it twisted and broke the pipe. Omigosh! We were proving to be disastrous guests! So we called Jenny to find out who their plumber was, but had to leave a message. We felt awful.

But then there was someone at the door. It was Paul's friend, Shaun, who had dropped by to pick something up from the shop. I told him our situation, and he came in to take a look. Shaun is in the lawn-sprinkler business, so he knows something about plumbing. He took one look and said, "Looks like basic log cabin work to me." Easy to replace that little pipe. He had some errands to do, but he said he would go by Jenkins, the local hardware, pick up the part, call Jenny to let her know what he was doing, and be back in an hour or so and fix it. Talk about "angels hovering 'round!"

So, after we got everything cleaned up from the flood (and learned that we couldn't run the dishwasher because it empties into that same drain!), I went to the Post Office to get stamps for my mailing to retired ministers in Vermont. Coming out I noticed that next door, at Jenkins, they seemed to have a lot of plants out front. I investigated and - voila! - healthy tomato plants! Only $1.75 a 4-pack! I bought three 4-packs and one more nice big one for good measure, and came back triumphant. And while I had been away, Shaun had come and replaced the pipe! We were in business. I got to work, and by a little after noon, all the tomatoes were replanted and looking good!

We are blessed!