Power, Poop, and Greasy Hair

Yesterday was a bit crazy. If you read my twitter updates on the sidebar, you might have seen what was going on. Basically, a car crashed into a power pole in the morning and we lost power just before nine. You know, just as I was headed into the bathroom to shower. Naturally.

We are on a well, so when we lose power, we lose water. We have a reservoir tank under the house that holds 80 gallons when it's full, so we do have a little to use, but when we don't know how long the power will be out I try not to use it. Before it runs out, everything get stirred up from the bottom and our water turns brown, and lasts that way for days after the power comes back. It's a delicate balance, estimating how much water you can use without running out or turning everything brown. And it's never fun when you realize that you cannot flush the toilet so the house will smell like poop till the power comes back.

I ran into two challenges yesterday:

1. We had Emma's parent teacher conference, which I was going to have to attend without showering. Now, I am not one of those girls that washes their hair every few says or it will dry out. Nope, by morning time I look like a day-32 Survivor contestant, minus the skinniness and overgrown eyebrows. Oh, who are we kidding, I am due for a waxing, so just minus the skinniness. I did the ever-so-fun baby wipes to the pits to try and convince myself I didn't stink, and added baby powder to my roots to try and relieve my hair from masses of grease. I think it kinda worked, but it was dark in the bathroom so I couldn't see myself clearly. That was probably a good thing.

2. We gave up on potty training for a bit since everyone got sick again, but yesterday morning the boys decided they wanted to go pee-pee on the potty! What would have been a celebration was marred by the fact that we couldn't flush the toilet or wash hands well. We made it work, but I washed their hands instead of letting them so it to preserve the most water as possible. A three-year-old uses approximately ninety-seven gallons of water while they are washing hands. Which is kind of funny to watch, since Emma is on "conservation patrol" around here and she will stand in the bathroom door and yell at them if they are wasting water. Which means they will yell back, and the yelling process means the kids are standing there fighting while water continues to go down the drain, defeating the whole purpose in the first place.

We usually have my in-laws over for dinner on Thursdays, but last night we went to their house since we couldn't cook dinner or see at ours. It was wonderful, and the power came back just before nine last night, minutes before we returned home. I found out this morning from my neighbor that the man who hit the pole has prostate cancer and was on a new medication that he didn't realize would impair his driving, but he started seeing double and went off the road. He took out the mailboxes, a fence and the power pole, which snapped in half and fell. Amazingly, he was talking after the accident, and lived! I am so grateful, I really thought that whatever had happened, there must have been a fatality. Thank you, Jesus!

Emma's parent teacher conference went well, I'll blog about that later. But her teacher had me in stitches at some of the things my daughter has been doing. Emma is a riot!

I hope you have a great weekend, I am skipping Friday Facts today because, well, I don't feel like doing them. I wanted to do this update, and now I want to go outside and play with the kids. I hope you all enjoy my birthday weekend!