Garbage Trucks, Stab Wounds, Floods, and Drums

I was feeling fancy yesterday, and wanted to make my family Hasselback potatoes with dinner. Knowing that they would be fairly time intensive, I started working on them as Ryan left to pick Clark up from school. We didn't have any chopsticks, so I grabbed the long grill fork to pierce each potato and use as my cutting guide, ensuring that I would not cut all the way through the potato. Things were going great until that last potato. Whether it was always going to be the last potato, or it became so after the following incident, philosophers will be debating until the end of time.

Ryan wasn't gone from the house for FOUR minutes when he received a video call from me, on the couch, writhing in pain, bleeding, and informing him that I couldn't feel 2 of my fingers. While the grill fork did, in fact, prevent me from cutting all the way through the potato, it did not save me from shoving the grill fork into one side of the potato, out the other side of the potato, and directly into the palm of my hand that was stupidly holding onto the far end of the potato.

I'm fine. Or at least mostly fine. Either luckily or terribly unfortunately, I have also stabbed the same palm with a knife, and didn't have full function of my thumb for a couple months. So, I am experienced in this type of injury. I stopped the bleeding, assessed the fact that I don't need stitches, cleaned the wound, drenched it in neosporin, and covered it with a couple of bandaids. Before you think I'm reckless, I also texted the three people I know who have any experience in the medical field whatsoever, and 2 out of 3 of them said my treatment protocol was "probably fine". 

I made it through the night, hand extremely sore, but otherwise okay. My day today started at 4am, when I just couldn't sleep anymore. Being down to one hand, I figured I could use the extra time to get everything together. Ryan and I have had to postpone our standing date night for several weeks due to various illnesses and crazy weather, but TONIGHT was looking real promising. I knew that the house was in need of some cleaning that I had been putting off, but was feeling pretty confident in my ability to get everything done in 13 hours.

As everyone got up and headed out of the house, Lincoln and I shared some morning snuggles and talked about how today is trash day at our house. Tuesdays are big days around here. We never miss an opportunity to watch big trucks drive up and down our street. He pre-emptively opened the curtains, and then occupied himself with a toy.

While I had a moment, I figured that I better start working on cleaning the kitchen. I organized and scrubbed the counters, disassembled the stove grates and deep cleaned around the burners. I took the grates over to the sink, plugged the drain, and started the hot water so they (and some other large dishes) could soak before getting scrubbed. We have a large kitchen sink that takes a while to fill, so I started the robot vacuum and grabbed Lincoln his morning snack.

As Linc finished his snack, I asked him if he needed to use the potty. He said that he did, and took off running for the bathroom. After I get him situated, I usually leave the door open while I gather a new diaper or pull-up, and get a few things together for him. But today, I noticed how the bathroom sink could probably use a good cleaning. So I stayed with him and cleaned the sink, mirror, and vanity. By that time, Lincoln was done and eager to get his reward. Both of us pleased with our work, we flushed, washed hands, and gathered our things to head to the couch and get him dressed.

It was en route to the living room that I remembered the dishes in the sink that were soaking. I did some quick mental math to calculate how long that water had been running, and then braced myself before looking into the kitchen. Y'all, I now know what it felt like to be on the Titanic. Water was EVERYWHERE.

The sink was completely full, the counters were flooded, and there was enough water on my kitchen floor to have a current. I waded through the water and managed to turn the faucet off, while frantically thinking of a plan for damage control. Meanwhile, Lincoln, naked as a jaybird, ignored my distress and sprinted to the window to wave to the garbage truck he just heard driving down our street.

For anyone not picturing this accurately, *this* is how my naked 3-year-old was greeting our entire neighborhood.

Suddenly, the flooded kitchen wasn't my biggest problem. So, there's that.

I yanked our little streaker off the back of the couch, closed the curtain, and wrangled him into a diaper. None of which are easy tasks with two good hands, so I was struggling pretty hard one handed. There was no time to think of actual clothing, so I cut my losses and let the wild animal run free in nothing but a diaper.

Knowing that I still had to deal with the kitchen, I told Lincoln to head upstairs with me to grab some towels. While up there, he reminded me that he had yet to receive his bribe treat for pooping on the potty. It's usually a handful of mini m&m's, but he knows that we have a couple of drums sitting out in our guest bedroom and asked if he could play the drums instead. Figuring he would need less supervision and had a much lower chance of choking while I would be trying to dry up an ocean on our first floor, I agreed.

Once downstairs and able to consider my options, it was easy to see that I didn't have many. Our hot water is really hot. Like, fires of Mordor hot. I had a sink full to the actual brim of Hell fire hot water, and a river of sudsy water all the way to the dining room. And I have one good hand. And my 3 year old is upstairs beating on the drums as though he's auditioning for Blue Man Group.

Much like my freshly self-inflicted stab wound to my own hand, this is fine.

I threw some towels on the floor and grabbed every large storage container and bowl that was within reach. I started carefully scooping out the still steaming hot water into each container I had - did that include the dog's empty food bowl? Yes, it did. It didn't take long for me to realize that this was a futile effort, and that I needed to get the dishes out of the sink. 

One good hand, standing in ankle deep burning water, with the chorus of 'Wipeout' being poorly played by my half-naked toddler one floor above me. Just a quick recap.

Trying to work smarter (remember how I used the grill fork in place of chopsticks?), I knew that I could not reach my arm all the way to my elbow down into the burning hot sink water to unplug the drain or gather the dishes out. So I found the tongs. And I painstakingly, one-handedly, pulled each stove grate out of the sink with tongs.

As the last grate came out, something happened with the giant crockpot that was also soaking. Something science-y. Water displacement? I don't know, but I'm sure that Bill Nye has a super interesting lesson on it somewhere. The crockpot started to shift, and with it, came massive bubbles. Giant, hot, soapy bubbles are now BILLOWING over the top of the sink. It's Pompeii up in here now.

Thinking that maybe if I start the garbage disposal, the suction might displace the plug (I don't know?!), I quickly turned it on, but heard the only sound in the world worse than a toddler being left unattended with a drumset; the screeching and grinding of some utensil stuck in the garbage disposal. So, that didn't work.

Neither did using the oven mitt. Or the snow shoveling gloves. And I dropped the tongs. 

Left with no other choice, and time not on my side, I gathered up that superhuman strength you hear about when mothers lift cars off their kids, and I stuck my one good hand into the erupting volcano of hot, sudsy water, and retrieved the plug. Mercifully, the water drained. And my husband didn't swing by for lunch in the midst of the ship quite literally sinking.

When he gets home tonight and asks me how my day was, I will be able to truthfully report the following: Lincoln pooped on the potty, I can feel my fingers again, I fixed the garbage disposal, and I mopped the kitchen floor. The rest of this little adventure stays between us, mmmkay?