What not to ask

This post is fertile fodder for 100acrewood's own blog, but I am going to borrow the content for The Lighthouse, hoping some light will be shed on my wonderings.

Much (too much) has already been written here about my general aridity of late; there is no need to go into that topic yet again. I am struck, just now, of the irony of the word I chose: aridity. Aridity, besides meaning disinterested in life, also means excessively dry. Dry = lack of water.

Water is not something we're short on around here. First of all, there is the almost daily rainfall, which, along with the very cool temperatures, is wreaking havoc on our tender young plants. Then, there was the leak from the master bath down onto my head as I sat one day at the kitchen table. Today, Number Four and Number Five were playing in the upstairs loo. The actual loo, not the room. I think they were testing how much toilet paper would fit, and how long you can hold down the flusher. The first sign something was wrong was when my sister heard water dripping. Drip is too gentle...perhaps gush is a better word. She heard water gushing, and realised it was in the pantry. Water was filling up the light fixture - one of those upside down bowl affairs common in most modern suburban homes. Water was running down the wall of the pantry, and further down to the basement. JB (my sister) and Bill ran upstairs to see what on earth was causing this flood, to find Five sitting as if swept away by the raging waters just outside the bathroom, sopping wet and somewhat stunned, though giggling ever so slightly, with bits of tp stuck all over his head. Four was beside the source, also giggling, and saying over and over again "Sorry. Sorry Mommy...sorry". The room was deep enough in water to float a small navy.

It makes for a funny story, and for the rest of his life, poor old Number Four is going to hear of how he flooded the house one day. But this comes after some financial flood/aridity troubles, vehicular leak issues and so on. The question I'm afraid to ask is What else? What next? What can possibly go wrong now? I'm afraid of getting a tangible, empirical answer, and just falling completely apart, in a soft, mushy, fading away sort of way, like the toilet paper used in today's experiment. Troubles are supposed to make us stronger, and there is no doubt a very good lesson to be learned from all of this. Some would say that things must be good, spiritually speaking, to be receiving so many challenges.

All I know is: my umbrella broke a while ago, so I'm getting quite thoroughly soaked. I'd really like to come in out of the rain for a while.