Let's all pack up and move to Alaska!!

There's nothing quite like getting woke up by a 4 year old voice saying "Mom, the bathroom is flooded!"

Sure enough, after jumping out of bed, I found a lake in my bathroom that was seeping out into the hallway. Another 10 minutes and it would have made its way to my bedroom, creating a swamp out of the mounds of clothing, yarn, notebooks and boxes that are strewn across my floor.

It's not bad enough that the floor was flooded. Both the hot and cold water were on full blast in the sink, which doesn't drain anywhere near enough to handle that much water flowing into it. I turned off the water, and made my way back to bed. Unfortunately, I couldn't fall back to sleep knowing the lake in the bathroom needed to be mopped up. Oh, I wanted to be lazy. I wanted to believe I could just drift back off to slumberland and the magical water faeries would fly in and soak up all the water for me. I tried to tell myself this. But I knew I was going to have to get back up and deal with it.

Well, that....and I had to pee.

So I grabbed a blanket out of the hall closet and threw it on the bathroom floor. Before I sat down to pee I realized it was awful cold in there, despite the heat coming out of the vent. I pulled back the curtain and found the bathroom window wide open.

Since I was still half asleep, I kind of shrugged, closed the window, peed and went back to bed. It wasn't until much later that I woke to hear Wren yelling at Boogie about turning on the water in the bathtub and her insisting she didn't do it. I lay under my warm blankets for awhile, wondering if we had a ghost. Or maybe.....did somebody break into our house and turn on the water? Perhaps one of the kids just decided they wanted an ice rink in the bathroom.

I think I must be really smart when I first wake up. Maybe it would be a good idea for me to do all brain-requiring activities first thing in the morning. Because as I lay there, I started thinking. Last night before we went to bed it was REALLY cold in our house. I mean, like, I went to pee and was shivering so hard I ended up with a headache. The thermostat in this house sucks. The only way to turn the heat on is by going down to the basement to the furnace. Oh, it has a neat little remote control that you can turn it on and off with, or reset the temperature on it. Ideally, this remote is supposed to work from anywhere in the house. In reality, we can't even get the remote to work when we're standing next to the furnace and pointing it right at it. So our thermostat is permanently set at 86 degrees.

Now, I'm all for warmer temperatures but 86 degrees is a bit warmer than I really want. So all winter long we go down and turn on the heat usually about once a day, for an hour or so. Apparently it got really cold last night, though. And we couldn't turn on the heat and then go to sleep or we'd wake up in a pool of sweat (although that may have been preferable to waking up with a lake in the bathroom). In my freshly awakened state, I put two and two together and actually came up with four!

It was cold this morning when the kids woke up. They turned on the heat, and realized the pipes were frozen in the bathroom (this has also been happening a lot this winter). One of them, thinking they were being helpful, turned the water on in both the sink and the tub hoping it would thaw out. Then they left for school. Luckily, Boogie was downstairs in her bedroom watching TV, noticed the water dripping from her ceiling and came up to investigate. The sink always thaws out before the tub does, which is why the water in there didn't start running until later. Oh, and the window? Well, Boogie loves to open the bathroom window and yell goodbye to the kids in the morning. Unfortunately, I think she opened it too much and couldn't get it closed.

I swear, I'm a genius.

I got up and went to tell Wren my wonderful epiphany and....mother of all that is holy! It was absolutely Arctic in the house again!!

Thank Moses for warm, oversized hoodies. I don't know where I'd be without them. I pulled on a hoodie and huddled back up under the blankets. Layers are good. Not only do they keep you warm, they hide any extra pounds you might have put on over the long winter.

You know, as much as I may get sick of the cold, it might just be worth it to move to Alaska. Hoodies and layers all year means you NEVER have to worry about dieting. Hell, I bet they even have sex with hoodies on.

Alaska, here I come!