First Day Back

Got up around 6:30 this morning and had a big cup of Jo. That’s one thing I missed while abroad. All of the coffee was served in little cups. I guess it’s the simple things.

The boy was the first child up. Both of them slept in the basement last night. They’ve been doing that quite a bit of late because it’s cooler and more comfortable down there. The down side is they don’t really sleep. It’s a slumber party for brother and sister. The boy actually came up at one point last night to complain that his sister wouldn’t stop talking and let him sleep.

So while I enjoyed my coffee, I also pulled out one of the books we brought back and started showing him pictures of the ruins we visited in Athens. The book has renderings of what the Parthenon and so forth looked like in their hay day.

The Wife was next up, followed by the lass. So I then showed them pictures we’d taken while over there.

I was the first to unpack my bag and start the laundry process. Being a guy, my laundry was simple- two loads, colors and not-so-colors. The Wife had a little more work to do. After she’d started her loads of laundry, she went with the kids to the grocery store to pick up stuff to make a Greek salad and gyros. We weren’t quite ready to give up on the cuisine, and we figured it would be something different for the kids as well. She even bought yogurt to make tzatziki.

In the meantime, I started yard work. In the time we’d been gone, the pines had shed their needles. Again. I’m seriously considering cutting all of the pines down, I’m so sick of the incessant pine needle precipitation. So I spent a couple hours raking the needles so the wouldn’t clog up the bag on the lawn mower. When the Wife returned with the kids, she threw them outside because they’d been after each other in the grocery store. The boy, particularly, was a real bugaboo, apparently. There’s something neither of us missed.

The area around the kid’s play gym outside had filled with weeds, so we sent them out to weed. That worked out like it always does, pull 2 weeds and then complain about how hard it is, or how the other sibling isn’t doing any work. I put the rake down to help them awhile. Once the weeds had been tamed, I picked up the rake and finished that job. Then I pulled out the edger and went to work with that. All of this in preparation for the main event, mowing the lawn. That’s something I definitely didn’t miss.

I also didn’t miss the humidity. The weather in Greece had been almost unreal. It was hot, but tolerable. Here, well, we’re right in the middle of the nasty weather season. High heat and humidity. Feh.

So by the time I was done and we’d eaten dinner, I was pretty pooped. I sat on the couch and did some light reading while the kid’s played out in the pool. I could barely keep my eyes open. The food coma was setting in on top of all the exertion. So I closed my eyes for a bit…

And snapped awake when I heard the unmistakeable sound of water dripping where it shouldn’t be. I was disoriented, so I got up out of the couch and listened closely trying to focus in on where the sound was coming from. At that point, the boy had materialized by my side. Where’d he come from? He was saying something, but I was still intent on pinning down the water drip. Where was it coming from? It sounded like it was in something.

Then I heard the lass, and she was panicked. She had that half-weepy voice where she sounded on the verge of tears, but wasn’t giving in. Finally, I realized what the boy was saying. The toilet upstairs had been clogged and the dripping was the toilet over flowing. The lass was responsible for the mess- that’s why she was half-weepy. She was afraid I was going to do something crazy, like stuff her in the toilet.

When we got upstairs, I considered it for a moment, but settled for having her mop up the floor. There was a nice puddle all around the toilet. Apparently, she clogged it with TP, attempted to rectify it with the plunger and then tested by flushing. Multiple times. I finished the plunging operation and unclogged the toilet, then set her to work sopping up the water. This took more supervision on my part than I’d have thought necessary but I eventually got her to complete the job satisfactorily.

When I returned downstairs, the dripping sound had stopped. It’s always nice to know a problem has been correctly identified and resolved. My only concern at that point was whether we’d have a water stain on the ceiling. As of this moment, there is none so I’m thinking it should dry out and the ceiling will escape relatively unscathed.

From there, the evening was pretty quiet until bedtime, where the boy was upset because he couldn’t find his favored blanket. He went to bed in tears.

Everything’s back to normal.