It all started when we moved into our house. My mom had the kitchen cabinets torn out so that she could upgrade the kitchen, but as life would have it we had to move in before any upgrades were made. As a temporary solution she installed a counter top to hold up the sink and propped it up with two unsecured boards. As many of you might imagine this was a ticking time bomb of a solution.
Being a typical teenager, I had refused to do the dishes until there were no more clean dishes in the house and found myself one weekend facing a huge pile of dirty dishes. I carefully sorted them all into types so that I could easily approach this mammoth task. After carefully arranging all of my mom’s glasses on the end of the counter beside the sink I filled the sink with hot soapy water.
As I started to put the first glass into the sink I realized my mom was pulling into the driveway. As anyone who has ever been a teenager knows, this was not a good situation as I should have long ago been finished this chore. I started to panic and as I turned to look at the task ahead of me I not so gracefully kicked one of the supporting boards out from under the counter!
In a split second I saw the enormity of the impending doom! The sink full of water was going to splash all over the floor which had holes in it under the sink that went straight through into the basement! I dove to support the sink only to hear a strange “smash” sound. It took a moment and then I heard another “smash” and I gazed in horror as I realized that the counter full of every one of my mother’s glasses was slowly tipping and one by one each glass was smashing onto the floor!
It was like everything had gone into slow motion and I was trying to figure out a way to save both the sink and the glasses. My feeble brain was almost useless thinking only “She is going to kill you!”.
I decided to hold onto the sink because in my mind the water would cause more damage than the broken glasses. It seemed like mom would never come in from the car and the time was being marked by an almost rhythmic smashing of one glass at a time.
When mom finally came in I started frantically trying to tell her to help. It took some fancy maneuvering but in the end we did manage to save two glasses and get the sink propped up again, but boy was she mad!
Looking back on this I laugh but in many ways life is kind of like that day. I find myself jumping from emergency to emergency trying to mitigate the most damaging situations that are presenting themselves in my life but all the while I can hear all of the little things that I can’t get to smashing down onto the floor.
It is my hope that one day I’ll be able to better balance all of the things that life throws at me, not just deal with the emergencies. If I can’t manage that then I at least hope to be able to entertain you with the tales of my adventures!
~ Elena <3
