Friend's Birthday...Year IV

Birthday wishes go out to the Friend that I mention in my posts. Friend has experienced several of the MA Fat Woman's mishaps and can always be counted on for a good laugh, a no nonsense quote, or a story that will upstage mine every time. Which reminds me of a story about Friend. Friend had a big time job and several underlings at her disposal for years. When birthdays and holidays floated around they always celebrated big. Everyone got cakes, presents, and usually taken out to dinner or the such. Well, Friend was really excited when it was time to celebrate her birthday. She had heard them planning and plotting the details of the party and was very excited. It didn't turn out that way. It seems the person that had done the planning had an emergency and all of the plans fell through. On the day of the birthday, there was nothing. No dinner! No presents! And no cake! Somebody realized what had happened and ran to Walmart to get an emergency cake. The day was a Friday and the office was scarcely staffed. After about 3 or 4 people sang Happy Birthday, each grabbed a slice of cake and scattered back to their respective offices. When it was time to go home that evening Friend went into the break room to get the cake to take home... ...it wasn't there! "Where's the cake?" she asked. "Oh, so-and-so took it with her. She said nobody had chipped in, so she was taking it home!" I know! Stuff like that happens all the time to her. Happy Birthday, Friend! I hope you get a cake that is all yours...

In The Dark And Kitchen Waterfalls

When I returned home from my mini vacation, I had a mountain of dirty laundry to attend to. When I left, everything had been working fine. After the first load I noticed a small backup in the sink and poured a bit of Draino to help get things flowing again. Here's me hard at work with the old plunger. A while later, Friend and I were in the living room when we heard the sound of rushing water. Not ordinarily a sound one would hear coming from the kitchen. You haven't seen two people move so fast. Water from the draining washer was now back flowing into the sinks and had over flown both of them and was now pouring out onto the floor. We immediately did what we do best: Friend yelling at me to get something and me running around in circles answering what should I get. Lord, what a mess! We used up every good towel and every other rag we could find. Who knew that washing machines could hold that much water? I was trying to get the laundry done before the big round of thunderstorms came in that night. The weather folks were predicting possible tornadoes, hail and high winds. At 10:00 PM, the night of my birthday, the first gust of wind from the first round of storms snapped a pine tree across the road, which in turn, fell on a power line that snapped off the top of a power pole. Hooray! No power! What to do... Downed power lines across the road Of course, I stayed up most of the night waiting for the power to come back on. Without much luck. The automated line at the power company kept updating the expected "power back on times". After about six hours of updating, they stopped giving estimates. The damage around the area was quite astonishing. Trees down everywhere. I was lucky, my power was only out for about 24 hours. In Mom's neck of the woods, there was extensive damage. So much so that the area was featured on the national news and the Weather Channel. This resulted in several phone calls from folks back home that were concerned about her welfare. Her power was not restored for almost three days. She was really glad to see me that morning when I showed up with a hot breakfast. Anyhow, the plumbing problem got resolved. A pipe in the basement had rusted through and had to be replaced. Luckily, it wasn't a larger septic issue. All in all, I had a great birthday. Not many people can say they started the day at the beach, found a waterfall in their kitchen and had the power knocked out...all in one day. Almost a bit too much excitement for my blood. Next year, I think I'll spend the whole day at the beach...