Tina Wainscott

This is how a leisurely Sunday morning turns into…well, a mess.  I walked toward the kitchen and saw a puddle all over the floor.  I could hear water running, and I thought, Shoot, a hose in the fridge broke or something!  And of course my husband is out of town that weekend.  When I walked into the kitchen I could see into our atrium…and there’s two feet of water inside!  I’m thinking, How can this happen?  And when I run up to the sliding doors, I see exactly how it happened: a raccoon is sitting on a rock looking at me like, “Help me, please!!!” and water is gushing out of the hose and it’s a surreal moment.  He had fallen in through the screen at the top of the atrium.
 

Thankfully I realized that I couldn’t open the door because all that water would come flooding out and make more of a mess.  So after some panicked calls to find out how the heck you turn the water off from the outside, I got it shut off.  Problem 1 solved.  Many more to go!  Five rooms of flooring (wood mostly) damaged and a raccoon in the atrium.  I couldn’t really be mad at him. He sure didn’t want to be there!
 

My parents came over and we mopped up the water that we could until the water damage company came out with their equipment.  We couldn’t get the raccoon out because there was still too much water inside.  But when the water drained down enough, he started getting all crazy again, clawing up the walls, and I knew I had to get him out of there, for my house’s sake as well as his.  I went out to the garage to see what was out there and found a fishing net.  Images of me trying to catch this frantic raccoon made me laugh.  Uh, I don’t think so.  Then one of those wonderful thoughts hits me: our neighbor is a hunter.  Maybe he’ll have a trap.
 

The couple came right over and he knew just what to do.  He put on fishing boots and grabbed the net and scooped the little guy up and freed him outside.  Thank you, Ed and Kelly! 
 

What I learned is that, even in the midst of crisis (well, once I got the water turned off), you can step back and look for the blessing.  In the midst of terrible things going on in your life, there is always a blessing, a lesson, something that is trying to grab your attention perhaps.  In this, I saw that we were going to have the opportunity to fix some things that needed fixing and give the house a bit of a facelift.  All I had to do was survive the construction noise and mess…
 

Cheers,
Tina