Once in a blue moon....that's how often it happens that no one in our house gets to church on a Sunday morning. But today, since one driver was out of town, one was sick, one had been out until 2am babysitting, and yours truly was recovering from the swamp of yesterday, everyone stayed home.

I had GREAT plans for yesterday. I was going to finish all the Christmas cards by noon and then get the boxes packed for mailing, and still have time left in my day to do a few school-related tasks and do my nails (which, common sense dictates, can't be done until the boxes are packed!). But...few things will bring your plans to a halt faster than a septic tank backup. I'll spare you the gory details; suffice it to say that having all the plumbing on hold, having to wait for a plumber on a weekend--and all the little niceties that come with that--sort of, well, stifled my plan. But okay, my wonderful son-in-law and son worked as best they could to fix the problem and when they couldn't we found a plumber who came late in the day and got us, er, flushing again and amputated my right arm in payment. Grateful to be flushing, I was glad to give up the arm, I mean the check, and start scrubbing and bleaching the shower, where the backup had manifested, and all the other affected areas. An hour and a half later things were as good as new.

Looking at the clock, I decided that I could still get in a couple of hours of wrapping and packing before I needed to iron clothes for tomorrow.

Those of you who know me well know that during December my very large bathtub becomes a repository for boxes of Christmas gifts as they get here. So I headed to the tub to retrieve the ones that need to be mailed. I bent over to pick up the first box and immediately knew I was in big trouble--for some reason the box had a very soggy bottom. Strange, I thought...wonder if something inside one of the boxes had come open and poured out? And then I looked down in horror to see a half inch of sludge in the tub: the shower had not been the only receptacle for the septic contents. Again, I'm trying not to be too graphic here, but you can imagine the scene that followed...

Fast forward: many of the gifts are ruined. Not only can I not wrap and mail them, they have to be reordered, setting me back another week. Most of the ruined things are books, including one hefty theological volume that I had purchased for a family member. On hearing this last night, Trish, my dear Roman Catholic friend, wanted to know if I was ready to admit, then, that my theology was all wet? One of the few smiles in my day ;-)

So...another two hours later and I had unpacked all the boxes, thrown away the affected gifts and the drippy, messy boxes, brought out the bleach for the second time, washed bathmats, and inventoried the loss for re-order. Time to iron and get to bed, assisted by pain meds to stave off what was a creeping sense that all the physical activity had aggravated my volatile hip/leg problem.

And by 6:30 a.m., I knew I was right and that I wasn't going anywhere this morning. I rose to find that no one else was going, either, which feels very odd. I fully expected to look outside at dawn and see the fading blue moon...