Current Events

I'm just about back into my groove from being out of town. Even when I'm gone for just a few days, there always seems to be a big list of things waiting for me when I return. The night before I left, I was doing laundry, and heard the sound of water hitting the floor in the basement.  I went down to find water coming up out of the vertical pipe that drains the washer. I needed those clothes, so I put towels down and hoped for the best - the load was almost done anyway. 

Fast forward to yesterday, when the plumber comes out.  Do the pipes gurgle when I flush the toilet? No. When I take a shower? Nope. He snaked the line and determined that there was just lint blocking the part of the line between the washer and the main. Lint. Like from someone's early felting projects where she didn't use a pillow case. Ahem. Oops. Well, $90 and no harm done. I use pillowcases now, so hopefully this won't be a problem. I am thankful that previous workers put a cleanout next to the house the last time I had sewer issues.

But I was going to mention something else. I was visiting my dad in Florida last weekend, and my brothers were there as well. My dad is kind of old-school, socially and fiscally conservative. I'm kind of left-leaning. We talked a lot about current events over the weekend. A lot. And I have to say how impressed I was with the degree to which we all have been paying attention. Someone would bring up an angle on some issue, and pretty much all of us had heard about what they were talking about, or something similar. I really liked how, although we didn't agree on how to fix things, we agreed on big issues and respected each other's opinion. It made me wonder if I was spending too much time reading about current events, when I could keep up with my dad, who is retired, but I think I'm OK.

One other thing that I learned over the weekend is that my younger brother has a unique memory of past events. The birth order is my sister, my older brother and me - each a year apart - and then him, six years after me. On the one hand, we will talk of things, and he'll say, "I was too young", or "I wasn't there".  On the other, he remembered things that I had forgotten about, and in wonderful detail. I have a new appreciation for his memories. There was a snake story that I had almost forgotten, and it was fun to hear it again.