I am having one of THOSE weekends – you know, the ones that make you appreciate root canals or colonoscopies! My eldest is graduating tonight, we have company coming and things scheduled all through the rest of the weekend. My kids are out of school but the school I work at has another week and I have not even begun to get the lab ready for summer. Last night Dale got up about 11:00 to take something for a headache and found that the washing machine had overflowed. He turned it off until the water drained down and then turned it back on. I shouldn’t really say the washing machine overflowed – the drain pipe behind it did – and it first backed up into the kitchen sink! It did it again. About that time I came up to the kitchen because he had been gone awhile and there were noises.

I mopped and mopped, and put the drain cleaner in the pipe behind the washer. When I went to get warm water to flush it with I realized that the sinks were full of water as well. I turned on the garbage disposal which instead of helping the water drain which it has when this happened in the past, the water backed up in the pipe some more – more mopping!!

I checked the outside cleanouts and they were empty which tells us that the problem is inside so I voted to let it all just sit til morning. It was slowly draining. This morning I have already put the drain cleaner in the pipe and let it sit and flushed it with hot water and it is going through that process a second time and hopefully that will do the trick. I do NOT like plumbing problems any time but especially not THIS weekend!

Sondra is coming tomorrow night and we will go with her to Dallas for her six month checkup to make sure she is doing ok with her one kidney. It will be good to see her. I’m going to drive one vehicle and let Dale ride with her so they can have a couple of hours to visit.

Through all of this I feel like the world is spinning just a bit too fast. I know it is graduation that is getting to me under everything. I can hear this quiet ticking in the background – the tiny, less than 4 pound baby that I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to care for as well as he needed. The little guy in diaper and pajama shirt with a Happy Meal box on his head singing with beauty and the beast. Tick tick. Now he is almost four, wearing shorts and cowboy boots and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Near Christmas time in kindergarten he asked our pastor if he could read something from his bible in church. His kindergarten teacher and principle actually came and he stood in front of everyone and read The Magnificat and sang The Foolish Man song. Now we fast forward and the ticking is so fast I can hardly discern the spaces between. Jr. High band (bassoon) and basketball. Band at the beginning of High School until he discovered that debate was his passion and he stuck with that throughout high school.

Next year my daughter will walk across the stage and a chapter in our lives will have ended and a new chapter will have begun. Tick Tick

The plumbing problem is fixed – it took one of those devices you attach to a hose and put in the drain and it lets pressure build up to break up a clog. I’m probably not describing it well but I do not want to understand plumbing just like I don’t want to think about this clock that keeps ticking!