It's hard to meditate in a flood

Readers of this blog will recall that, after many many years meditating in one spot of the house, I changed locations.

This morning, meditating in a new location, I was smiling. I was calm. I was so happy that I had a new spot in which to meditate. I lit four candles and settled into my breathing.

But soon, I heard a strange noise. First I thought it was the wind whistling through the windows.

But soon enough I realized that the sound was like water. Water dripping. Water sloshing. Water? Where would the water possibly be coming from?

Ah, but the sound of water sloshing slowly seeped into my calm meditative mind.

I got up from my cross legged position, sitting on the floor. With the candles still burning, I decided to open the basement door.

Lo and behold, there was a small ocean in one corner of the basement.

A few weeks ago, we hired an energy expert to help find areas of the house where we were losing heat. The expert told  us that we needed to cover the dirt floor of our dungeon-like basement (the house is at least 100 years old.)

So they laid big sheets of white plastic over the dirt.  There was a leak from a pipe but it was just a drip, so we put a pail underneath the drip.

And then it snowed a few days ago and then came the rains.

And the flood in the basement. My poor husband started bailing out the basement with a pail. I wasn't meditating anymore.

I wanted to call the energy expert and have him fix my flooded basement. In fact we did call him and when he called back I told him I wanted to take care of the flood. He said the flood wasn't his responsibility.

So then we did what we always do when there is a crisis in the house: we call a wonderful handyman named Keith who has done a ton of work for us over the years.

In all the 36 years we have lived in this house, we have NEVER had a flooded basement. That's because any water coming into the basement seeped into the dirt floor.

Well so now Keith is in the basement with my husband, trying to assess the flood.

All I can say is, THANK  YOU GOD FOR KEITH. He always knows what to do, at least where our house is concerned.

Meanwhile, meditation was impossible. That calm smiling feeling was nowhere to be found.

Ah well, I breathe deep and say, tomorrow is another day.