Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner

Here's a story about a mom with two children who was renting out a friend's basement apartment. We'll call the Mom Betty.

Once upon a time a housewife named Betty invited friends over for a play date. The friends came and the children were overjoyed to see each other. As little children often do, one needed to go potty. Betty was about to direct a child to her bathroom but noticed it was not flushing properly. So Betty showed the child upstairs to another bathroom and made a mental note to find a plunger and deal with the matter later.

Once the play date was over, Betty found a plunger. The plunger did not fix the problem. This puzzled Betty greatly as she herself possessed a wealth of experience in toilet plunging. Betty delegated the problem to her DH to solve with liquid plumber or something of the sort. Plenty of chemicals later, the toilet was still clogged and the family was using another bathroom upstairs.

Two days later, Betty noticed a foul smell in her living quarters. She checked the diaper of her potty training child, to find she was not the culprit. Her keen sense of smell finally led her to the utility room where water had begun puddling. It smelled. Betty was grateful she was not pregnant at that very moment because she would have puked at the stench otherwise.

Betty called her friend's plumber of choice (we'll call him Plumber Uno) and he came to the rescue a few days later.

What was the problem? A diaper.

Yes, a diaper had been flushed down the toilet which got caught in the ejector pump, which backed up the pipes, which caused water to begin puddling on the utility room floor.

Plumber Uno cleaned out the ejector pump and Betty was mortified.

A diaper!

Later that day Betty had lots of fun scrubbing the utility room floor with Clorox.

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2 weeks later....

Betty wakes up one morning to find her toilet is not flushing properly. Again. The plunger did not work, nor did products the DH had stocked up on last time there were toilet issues. Betty, dreading the outcome, opened the utility door to find water puddling on the floor. Again.

Betty calls her friend's plumber of choice, but he didn't answer. Anxious and antsy, Betty elects to use Service Magic to find a plumber.

90 seconds later, a plumber (which we'll call Plumber Dos) calls and says he can be there within the hour. Great! Betty is grateful for the fast service and drops her son off at preschool.

Plumber Dos arrives and checks things out. Betty is afraid he is going to find another diaper in the pipes. Betty decides if he finds a diaper in the pipes, she is going to submit a letter of resignation. After all, Betty thinks, a good mother wouldn't let this happen twice!

Plumber Dos' sleuthing skills discovers the ejector pump has broken down completely. The culprit? Flushable wipes. They aren't flushable, Plumber Dos explains.

Mortified, Betty calls her friend who owns the pipe (and the broken ejector pump) to ask if Plumber Dos can replace her ejector pump. Betty feels bad it is not Plumber Uno replacing it, but she was not expecting something like this.

Betty writes Plumber Dos a check for a great deal of money and wants to crawl under rock.

Betty can't crawl under a rock because she remembers she still needs to purchase a gift for her son's preschool teachers and her son was graduating in 19 minutes.

Betty goes to a spa to buy gift cards only for her debit card to be denied. Annoyed, Betty uses another card and rushes to her son's graduation, only to be swept away by more emotions. Betty cries. She's not sure if it's over the plumbing issues, her son growing up too fast, or both.

Betty speaks with her bank later that day to discuss the debit card problem.

"Betty," the bank lady kindly says, "your account is overdrawn."

In a panic, Betty rushes to her laptop to log into her account to view the transactions. Betty presumes the worst. Fraud, stolen identity, some crook from Papa New Guinea siphoning money out of her account.... According to Betty's calculations, there should have been 3 paychecks worth of money in her checking account.

Should have transferred the money to savings before Mr. Papa New Guinea got a hold of my identity, Betty grumbled to herself.

Betty looks online and notices a few things wrong.

1. DH withdrew a large sum of money a few days ago in the form of a cashier's check.

2. DH's payroll hadn't rolled in.... for 2 months.

Betty calls DH to explain himself.

DH had forgotten to mention a few things:

1. He needed to take out a large sum of money to pay the lawyer.

You remember, honey? DH asks. I told you I was going to do this last week, he reminds her. Betty remembers, but thought DH was paying for a different attorney. The attorney who is paid seven hundred dollars once every blue moon. No, it's a different attorney, DH explains.

2. The payroll thing was intentional (you know, they do that just for fun sometimes!)

Oh phooey on those minor, pesky little financial details.

Betty does not respond to these minor details very calmly to DH. Finally she swallows a fist full of chill pills and transfers her money from savings into checking and realizes it's not that big of a deal.

It just happened on the wrong day.

Betty finishes her day scrubbing the utility room floor with Clorox still feeling very rotten.

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Fast forward 2 weeks later, and good fortune has found Betty. Though it found her in the smallest of forms, Betty rejoices.

Good fortune nugget #1: Betty rolled 4 Buncos at Bunco (Betty says don't ask. It's a girl thing) which won her this:

Good fortune nugget #2: Betty checked her favorite blog to discover this.

Did you catch it?

Suh-weet.