The past week in a word  – bleak.

Sunday night, I discovered about a quarter inch of water in our basement bathroom.  Thinking it was from the toilet, I immediately swooped up Monkey (who was right behind me and now splashing in the water), took Monkey upstairs, wiped him down and put new clothes on him as well as myself (the bottom of my pants were wet as well as my socks).

When DH got home, he said “Listen!” and we could hear water running somewhere in the house.  He opened our front door and realized that it was coming from the front of our house near the front spigot.  Then he ran downstairs and turned off the valve for that spigot.  This stopped the water flow but on the way to the valve, which resides in our storage crawl space, he discovered the saturated carpet in the “cat room” and the half inch of water in our crawl space.

This was not good obviously.  And I won’t go into anymore detail other than to say after using the carpet shampooer ten times and buying a dehumidifier, the carpet is mostly dry.

Last night, Monkey awoke at midnight with a stuffy nose.  He’s been battling a cough off and on since November but this was different.  I went into his room and he cried so hard that I just had to pick him up and comfort him.  He just was all out of sorts and is still feeling pretty under the weather tonight but sleeping okay after DH did a thorough suctioning of his nose.

This week has another cloud hanging over it.  Our daycare provider’s stepmother has ovarian cancer and has been moved from hospital to hospice.  Therefore, our daycare provider is traveling to Colorado on Friday to visit with her stepmother.  She was gracious enough to let Monkey come on a day when he’s not really supposed to so I could get more hours in for work.  I never know what to say to people who are in these situations.  I wish I could say the right thing or do the right thing, but I usually just freeze up.  She and her stepmother are in my prayers … maybe that’s enough.

It’s hard to think there could be a silver lining to this week but a tiny one shined this morning.  As I was getting dressed in our bathroom this morning and Monkey was sitting on the bed with DH, I heard this little voice from our bedroom, “luv lu.”

It doesn’t take away the ovarian cancer for our daycare provider’s stepmother, or change the fact that I’m dropping off two cats I’ve had for years at a shelter tomorrow (more about this tomorrow), or that Monkey is sick yet again, or that our basement is still a wreck, but it does make things seem a little less bleak.