From Memphis with love . . .

Far away in North Carolina, my husband sunk to new lows of oblivion.  Or wife torture.  I am still debating the possibles.

Meanwhile, my youngest daughter created a new art form.   She is 10 yo and doesn’t know that texting is meant for necessary information in-the-moment.  Thus, Prairie has developed epic adventure texting, which is exactly what it sounds like — she turns the goings-on at home into an epic length adventure with her thumbs.

Allow me to set the stage and tell the story . . .

Setting:  Memphis and Home

Cast of Characters:

Sid:  the oblivious husband or a villain in disguise who tortures his wife with limited, ill-timed information while maniacally laughing to himeself ? – the reader decides;  he is at home in NC

Tina:  the patient and ever-loving wife of Sid, mother of Sidney, Lincoln, Rachel and Prairie, currently living far from home in Memphis

Sidney:  17 yo son in Memphis with his mom

Lincoln:  14 yo son living at home with his dad, Sid

Rachel:  12 yo daughter living at home with her dad, Sid

Prairie:  10 yo daughter living at home with her dad, Sid

Late one evening, Tina checks her phone before going to bed and sees an hour old text message from her husband.  Expecting a lovely good night, instead she reads . . .

Sid:  We just had some excitment here tonight.

Tina returns the text:  What?!!?

No response.  Sid has gone to bed.

What kind of “excitement” could her husband and 3 children have 1 hour after their typical bedtime?  she wondered.

Tina mumbles and grumbles as she gets ready for bed.  Why did Sid have to be so all-fired mysterious?

Next morning, Prairie sends a text to Tina.

Prairie:          This is Prairie.

Do not scream, mama. But our 🏡 got flooded. Well….not really.  Let me tell you the whole story:

I had put my laundry in the washer and went under the covers with Rachel behind me.  We went to bed and I started to tell her a story when the alarm on the washing machine turned on.  Rachel got up to investigate while I stayed under the covers.    

A few seconds later she comes in the room and says to me:  “The washing machine door isn’t closed all the way.”

 I gulp.  “Is there a lot of water?”

 “Maybe,” she said.  I followed her and gasped.

 There was water dripping out of the washing machine.  Rachel tried to open the door, but it was locked.

 “Your mess,” Rachel said.  I snatched some rags and pressed them on the drips.  The drips came down fast like slithering snakes as I pulled back my fingers in dismay.

 “The water is hot!” I cried.  “What are we going to do?”

 “I don’t know!” Rachel answered.

 I frowned.  “Let’s try opening the machine again,” I suggested.  Rachel pulled hard on the door and tugged.  Finally, the washing machine burst open.  The drips disappeared, and instead, water poured out.  I don’t mean just a little bit of water, I mean ALOT of water!  It poured out like an exploding waterfall!  And it spread along the hallway, in the parents’ room, in the bathroom, and down the stairs.  Water leaked through the walls and in the basement.  

I ran in my room to grab my robe as I screamed to the top of my lungs. Daddy and Lincoln came out.

 Boy, we made a good team!  We grabbed towels and cloth and wiped down the floors hard, and Daddy was the one who discovered the water in the basement, and there was water in the dining room.

Turns out, that this was none of our faults!  The water in the washing machine was very high.  Daddy plans to check on it today.

 It was scary but pretty adventurous.

Tina laughs so hard she is crying.  Then she reads the text aloud to her Sidney who laughs so hard, he is almost crying.

THE END

.

People seem to doubt me when I say that Sidney and I laugh a lot.  If they only knew — the stories I don’t have time write, the stories I’m not allowed to write because my family would be disgruntled.

But there are a lot of good stories, a lot of good reasons to laugh almost every single day.