Sandra Beck – Boucing with Style: Starting Over but not from Scratch
By Sandra Beck
It’s been hot. And not just sticky icky yucky steamy hot but fry potatoes on the hood of your mini van hot. Baking sun, hot dry desert breezes…oh wouldn’t a cold drink be nice right now?
What’s the puddle in front of the fridge I ask myself. Living in the desert there isn’t a puddle for 15 miles. I open the freezer everything is soupy and goupy. My fridge smells swampy and there is a damp film on everything. It’s disgusting. We haven’t been home for three days. Clearly the fridge hasn’t done its job either.
I actually rolled in my city trash can into the kitchen figuring I would have to mop the floor anyway. I tossed probably two hundred dollars of food in the trash. I call the repair company – there is only one that serves my community under the warranty and it’s going to be three days to come out and then they will need to order the part come back and install it.
Haha! I am resilient mom so I pull out my cooler, head to the gas station for ice. Milk, eggs, OJ that’s all the kids and I need. NINE DAYS LATER I am ready to shoot myself.
I am tired of hearing “I don’t want to drink sink water.” “I’m too tired to go out to dinner I need to finish my homework.”
Personally I am tired of sink water too. I am tired of running down to McDonald’s to buy milk for each kid every morning or Orange Juice only to have them take three sips and have nowhere to store it. I am tired of coming home from soccer with two dirty kids who want a long cool drink and they get “warm sink water” as my 9 year old put it.
I thought back to when I was a kid and all we had was sink water. It came from our lake, pumped right out of the bottom. I admin that I am really spoiled now with chilled water and ice from our fridge – icy cold and filtered. I thought of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought of all the families in third world countries without clean water to drink. Well this is California for God’s sake and I am sitting in the stinking heat drinking warm lemonade. I’m soft. I’m spoiled. I like my chilled drinks.
The doorbell rings and there he is… my hero. The Maytag repairman. No, not Gordon Jump rest is soul but a man with a tool kit and the part I need. Hours later I am at my kitchen table sipping my cold drink and I was full of gratitude. I realized how much I took just having cold water for granted.
I am thankful for the refrigerator that makes my life exponentially easier. I gave it a little blessing. I went in and thanked my air conditioner, my washer, my dryer and my oven for their service. It’s only when these items break down that we realize just how lucky we are living in an industrialized nation with a washer so we don’t have to beat our clothes on rocks and drink the same water. I wonder if the kids there say “I don’t want laundry water!”
Bouncing with Style 