Have you ever sat outside near a stream and listened to the relaxing sound of water spilling over rocks and splashing into puddles? That is quite possibly the most tranquil of all sounds.
Now imagine that same sound inside your house, only the water is spilling over a windowsill and splashing on the the carpet. I promise that sound is neither relaxing or tranquil.
Such was my morning yesterday. When I went down to my son's basement bedroom to wake him up for school I heard the alarming, yet undeniable, sound of water trickling in from the window. I could see that the window well outside had filled with several inches of water that was leaking into the house. Apparently the downspout from the roof was clogged and the rain gutter had filled up with water and then froze. So all of the rain that fell yesterday morning (and I guess the water from melting snow as well) had no where to go except out the end of the rain gutter and directly into the window well below it.
Don't you hate it when that happens!!?
As I frantically tried to mop up the mess with every single towel I own, my husband climbed up to inspect the downspout. The problem? A tennis ball.
Evidently one of the kids failed to report loosing a tennis ball on the roof last fall. The ball had rolled into the downspout and completely sealed it off.
All day yesterday I contemplated the irony of it all. I was so delighted by my newfound joy of tennis that I had begun teaching my children how to play. Everyone got new tennis rackets and we spent a few warm fall evenings at the courts as a family. We had a great time just being together. One time I even teared up a little bit as I watched my kids hitting the ball back and forth with their dad. The phrase "wholesome recreational activities" from the Family Proclamation kept coming to mind and I realized that what were were doing was a good thing. I knew that the side effects of playing a sport together--the relationships, the memories, the fun--would be worth all of the effort and hassle it took for us to do it.
So as I listened to my husband scooping bucket after bucket of muddy ice water out of the window well, while I was on my hands and knees sucking up water from a soaked carpet with a wet vac---I realized that this was a side effect of family tennis that I hadn't really bargained for!
2 comments:
Sarah- I tagged you. See my site for what to do.
Oh, yikes. We heard that sound three or four times in our basement our first fall in this house before we finally fixed the grading of the dirt that the builder screwed up. NOT fun or relaxing.
Hope you don't abandon tennis altogether now. But you can certainly threaten bodily harm for unreported lost balls . . .
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