Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2012

While standing at the kitchen sink, prepping food to be cooked for our Thanksgiving feast this past weekend, I heard a puzzling sound—the drip, drip, dripping of water and then splashing as it collided with a plastic bag below.  Looking up to the source of the water issue, I tilted my head and said, “Hmmm…that’s not supposed to be happening,” as I viewed a small waterfall of water cascading down the inside of the kitchen window, making lovely patterns as the beads of water raced to the window ledge below. 

Two of my kids were working beside me and also looked up.  Both, as did I, marveled over how there could be water coming down when it wasn’t raining, hadn’t for four days and there was no water running in the house.

In the past, I may have gotten upset.  But not anymore.  Knowing there was nothing I could do about the leak until Monday, I decided to laugh it off and be grateful when the water stopped as suddenly as it had begun. 

Come Monday morning, I was on the phone, figuring out who I should have come and take a look at the problem, which hadn’t reoccurred but needed to be addressed. 

Just a few houses down, there’s a woman who bought a fixer-upper just after I moved in.  Her contractor, one of her friends, is doing a marvelous job renovating the entire house.  He and I became acquainted about a month after I moved in, him impressed as he watched me happily shovel wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of decomposed granite and also pea gravel, weighing in at a whopping four tons, that I used to lay a foundation for my dog run.  Every time the contractor passed by that day, he smiled and would comment that I was working way too hard.  Thus began a friendship.

Ironically, it was that contractor I turned to about the leak over my kitchen sink.  He arrived first thing this morning and spent the next four and a half hours patching up the source of the problem.  He smiled while working, and we talked on and off.  When the job was done, I thanked him and asked what I owed.  His smile broadened as he told me I owed him nothing.  That he was happy to be able to help out.

Tomorrow, rain’s expected.  Not a lot…but enough.  I’m grateful for my friend who was willing to come to my aid and solve what the weather could have turned into a nasty problem.  Let’s hear it for folks’ willingness to help one another!