Sorry...

Sorry I haven't posted for a while. We've had a string of disasters in our family and we just feel like we've been beaten up by life. I know others have had worse things happen, but when you hit 6 bad experiences in less than a month, it kind of piles up on you. We had a terrible blowout on the interstate coming back from our vacation and ended up buying all new tires. That put a real dent in the vacation budget... not to mention scaring us half to death.

The day after we got home, our ejector pump died and flooded part of my basement studio and the bath area with sewage water. We got that cleaned up and were waiting for new flooring and our beloved 11 year old cocker spaniel got very sick. It turns out that he had massive tumors in his liver and even extensive treatments offered us little hope. We didn't feel we could put him through that, so we had to say goodbye to the best dog we ever had. We still have a border collie mix and he has been grieving something awful. This lively and playful dog has become my Velcro dog and won't leave my sight.

During this time period, we were also busy trying to replace our couch and bathroom vanity. My husband decided to use my extremely sharp vegetable slicer without the guard and cut off a chunk of the end of his thumb. They had to put stitches through his thumbnail. After we get the thumb started on its way to healing, we got our new vanity base for the bathroom but they broke the old top trying to remove it so we had to order a custom made sink top to go with the new vanity base which was custom built to fit a specific space.

The sixth event happened when they were installing our new flooring. They were over half-way finished when a terrible storm hit and knocked out our power. We'd had so much rain that when the sump pump stopped working, the back-up didn't kick in and water ran into the basement and over all the new flooring and the storage room. I have a huge basement studio and everything was sitting in water. The flooring installers came back and helped us get all the furniture up on blocks. The restoration people came and set up a monster dehumidifier and 12 monster fans. It sounds like a wind tunnel coming up the basement steps.

Today, things are starting to dry out and we're down to 1 fan --- still noisy, but bearable. We're hoping for no more disasters for a long time. I'd settle for never! Through it all though, I realize that there were angels helping us through each crisis. There are a lot of good people out there who don't think twice about helping someone --- friend or stranger. We are so grateful. I am counting the days until I can get back into my studio and work on stamping and scrapbooking. I'm suffering from withdrawal. Yesterday, my lunch bunch friends surprised me by each making me a hand made card. See what I mean about angels?