Getting Pruned, or, The Silver Lining

Unfortunate occurrence #1: the car wreck. I missed my red minivan. It was gone for two weeks. (It's back as of Friday-hooray! But it was making funny noises, so it goes back in tomorrow-boo.)

The silver lining: Since we're kind of homebodies anyway, it wasn't the biggest deal in the world to be without a car. I got a few things done around the house, like fix a sprinkler drip line, and weed a lot, and clean a bit, and replace light bulbs, etc. I half-heartedly attempted to potty train Ivy, who is totally okay with using the potty before baths. But when I tried to get her to go, say, in the morning, she sat there, and yell-cried at me, giving me this look of utter contempt. Maybe I need to show her the Tinkerbell undies that I got. (Ivy loves "Tee-beh".)

In the meantime unfortunate occurrence #2 happened: our air conditioner leaked. Kind of a bit, onto our basement floor and onto bottoms of boxes.


(You can't really see it on this picture very well; it's just the still-wet cement two days after getting it all sopped up. Who knew cement stayed wet for so long?)
The silver lining: Fortunately, I've kept our cat's food and all that near there; if I hadn't, who knows how long it would have been before discovering the awesome wetness, and who knows how much further it would have spread.

Because I was stuck at home, my schedule was wide open to have the fixer guys come. And they fixed one part of it for a small fortune. Then, it leaked again the next day, and the guy came and fixed another part of it for another small fortune. I think it's good to go now.

But the leak turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It forced me to pull out all our boxes and go through things. And because I'm a minimalist, it was way super awesome to get rid of a bunch of stuff that we haven't used in a long time.



I also pulled out a bunch of books and put them out on our bookshelves. They had been in boxes because little hands kept bending them. But those little hands have grown up a bit, so now I feel safe pulling all those books out again.


And also, because I love to organize, it was awesome to put a bunch of things back in place and all together. I can Tetris the crap out of anything. And since I got my car back, I was able to haul off a bunch of stuff to D.I. and to the dump. I feel lighter!

Which is ironic, because I just read this scripture the other day: Helaman 15:3-...yea, the people of Nephi hath he loved, and also hath he chastened them; yea, in the days of their iniquities hath he chastened them because he loveth them. I looked "chasten" up in the dictionary, and it says "... to prune of excess, pretense, or falsity, refine; to cause to be more humble or restrained; subdue." So, monetarily, we've been chastened in the last couple of weeks. But maybe it's because I needed to get pruned of some of my excess.

*sigh* I love blessings in disguise.