If you...

If you find a puddle on the floor in front of the refrigerator during the middle of the day, you may assume it was just a melted ice cube and clean it up while making a mental note to reprimand the children for the thousandth time to throw the ice outside if it drops on the floor. While making that mental note to self, you will also remember that you owe a response from days ago to someone's blog topic and make a vow to get it done in the quiet of the evening. To ensure a quiet evening, you will decide to watch a movie with your husband even though he's a wee bit grumpy that the "to-do list" is still largely undone despite the fact that you both worked hard all day (except for a quick power nap that ended up being not-so-quick because no one woke you up out of a kind desire to let you rest, which sadly thereby guaranteed the to-do list remained unfinished.) If you've had a rather long nap, you will feel awake enough after said movie that you take on the pending blog project despite the late hour. If you take on the pending blog project you will realize how very much you have to say about the topic and in the end wonder if a) you should just have made it your own blog post or b) you made any sort of sense at all or c) you even remotely answered the question she asked. While you are pondering all this, you will decide you really should wrap it up since it's 12:40 AM. If you wrap it up at 12:40 AM, you will need to go get a glass of water to take your medicine and head to bed (and you will now be feeling very sleepy). If you are feeling very sleepy, and in need of a glass of water to take medicine and go to bed, you will walk to the fridge to get your water and find a small lake on the floor in front of the fridge. If you find a lake in front of your fridge, you will feel the need to confirm what you sickeningly know in your gut is true and will open the freezer door to find nothing frozen inside anymore. If you find nothing frozen inside your freezer anymore at 12:40 in the morning, you will need to wake up your husband. If you wake up your husband, he will first jump out of his skin, then groan, then come fully awake in mere milliseconds as you explain the situation. If he becomes fully awake in mere milliseconds, you will head to the kitchen to assess the situation. If you assess the situation, you will realize there is really NOTHING you can do at 1 AM to solve the problem, because my friends love me, but not THAT much. You will however waste precious sleep time trying desperately to reconfigure you kitchen in a way that places the fridge ANYWHERE but directly in front of the back door. If you waste precious sleep time doing that, you will head to bed exhausted but adrenaline filled at 2:30 AM knowing you must be at church at 8:30. If you have to be at church at 8:30, and your refrigerator is dead, you will skip breakfast and give your children permission to eat their body weight in dunkin donuts doughnut holes from the snack table. And then, you will hopefully find loving friends and/or family who are willing to take them home highly sugared up so you can go blow ridiculous amounts of money on a new fridge without having 4 kids underfoot. If you do manage to find "homes" for your kids, you will KNOW your friends and family LOVE you (at least the ones who don't have to go shoe shopping) and you will luckily find what you are looking for ON SALE and for right at what you had mentally budgeted to spend based on how much cash the money tree in your yard can produce overnight, LOL. If you find what you are looking for, within your price range, you will have a few dollars left from that pretend money tree to replace the FLOOR that is ruined from the puddle-turned-lake that led you to discover the dead fridge in the first place. And if you buy new flooring, well, let's just say now there's a whole NEW to-do list, and a very concrete time line to get it done in!

Okay, I could go on forever in the If/then style, but let me just say that the fridge can't be delivered until WEDNESDAY, but God is soooo good. Our neighbors across the street have an extra fridge in their garage and they are letting us use it to store what was not ruined in the dead fridge fiasco. We'll be eating a LOT of soup this week. I have NEVER had the freezer so full, of course, so now we have a lot to consume in a short amount of time. But the lack of ice...Oh, that is hard! You never realize how much you use ice until you can't just go to the fridge to get some! The fact that the fridge won't get here until Wednesday gives us time to deal with the floor. Our kitchen is highly dysfunctional-an old porch that was converted into a kitchen. It is 7 feet across and 20 some feet long (33 feet total if you include the laundry area). And it has two different sub floors-wood and concrete-depending on where you are. The people we bought the house from spared no expense and laid "3 for a dollar" peel and stick tiles, and they have really been looking YUCKY for about 6 years now (yes, we moved in 6 1/2 years ago). I have to clean them with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser on my hands and knees to get them clean, and then one whirlwind trip through by the kids and all evidence of the cleaning is erased. The tiles were light colored and all of them were horribly cracked-some even missing chunks (like 2X3 pieces), so really I am thrilled to have a reason to replace them. AND some friends of ours had given us 2 boxes ($60 worth) of nicer peel and stick tiles that we were just waiting to use, so we bought another box today to be able to cover more of the area, and we will get to work so the laundry area and back door/fridge spot will be done before Wednesday. Exciting stuff, but HARD WORK. Luckily, cheap peel and stick tiles come up easy when they are soaking wet :-). Sadly, the floor beneath is grosser than gross looking.
Pray for us as we take on this project we weren't planning on having to deal with yet. I am totally willing to give over MY plans and acknowledge that this is GOD's plan for us, but it does take a mind shift and leaves us with some unfinished projects in other rooms that don't help the overall look of the house any (think gaping holes in the bathroom ceilings from where my husband has been diligently working on replacing the ventilation fans-but of course in an old home NOTHING is as easy as it should be.)
I'll be doing the happy dance though when I welcome in the 2nd day of the New Year with a partially new floor and a totally new fridge!
obm