A very bad night

As I look through the dried, pink wine droplets on my computer screen I’m reminded of just one more reason that last night was a very bad night.

Yesterday was to be the day that we dramatically presented our petitions to the School Board to demonstrate that the community was behind us. It was not much of a surprise to hear Tom Hustad, last night’s acting chairman, say that we were more of an imaginary group than real and tell us that we were all being a little emotional about having our voting rights stripped away. Us and Martin Luther King Jr. Boo hoo hoo.

The wine stains came when I had to call a close member of my extended family to prompt them to honor an agreement over a long simmering family dispute. Reaching past my filled wine glass for the phone I managed to tip the glass over and soak everything in a three foot radius. I mopped up after that storm though all the nearby paper products, and my office is a bit of a mess after the past few weeks, have nice little pink reminders of the mayhem.

The spill was just the first post school board disaster. My phone call was too. Apparently honoring agreements in family disputes was a low priority. I gritted my teeth and went to bed stewing about this while trying to ignore the flashes of light from a storm passing overhead.

“Wake up the basements flooding.” I heard as Claudia rocked me violently to consciousness. My son had discovered an inch of water in the basement so I crawled out of bed in my skivvies and groggily made my way down the final disaster of the day. It had been raining to beat the band before bedtime. A report of a foot of water on Hwy 169 near Orr had flashed across the 10PM weather report. Our rain gauge read just over four inches this morning.

I made the mistaken assumption that all the water had flown in from the walls which occassionally happens. I quickly pulled up the drain cover thinking it would all magically disappear only to see a terrible black fluid bubbling up from below, discoloring the formerly tea colored water. I frantically tried to push the drain cover back on and then looked for something to bail the ugly water to pour and flush down the toilet. The Toilet flooded copiously. My drain was blocked.

Frankly it all reminded me of the folks trying to take away my voting rights. I washed up exhausted and left the mess for the morrow. I did a good bit of stewing before finally succumbing to the powers of Morpheus.

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