A Series of Unfortunate Events

I haven't written a post for a while, but I do have not one, but several good reasons why. They say bad things come in threes. Well, my 'third' just happened, so I think I am now in the clear.
First off, I lost my wallet. This happens to people from time to time, but it had never happened to me and it sucks! It was my own fault, I was rushing to do a long list of errands in Halifax and I left my wallet on the roof of my car after filling up with gas. After searching along roadside ditches to no avail, I gave up and started the long process of bringing my life back together in id form.

Then another unfortunate incident happened - driving to visit Teresa in the deep wilderness of NB last weekeend- I hit a deer. It could have been worse. The deer could have come flying in through my windshield or it could have been a moose. Thankfully, Caleb didn't see a thing because it was not a pleasant thing to witness and the damage to my car wasn't too bad (I managed to drive it back to NS). So, now I'm dealing with appraisals, insurance claims and trying to sort that aspect of my life out.

Then this weekend came the real kicker. Alan had just returned home from 2.5 weeks on tour and we both happened to be in Halifax for a night without Caleb. We came home after a nice evening out to 5 missed calls from our brand new tenant in our Bayside home. He hasn't even moved in yet, so we were a bit concerned that he was calling 5 times to report something to us...did we have a crazy-high maintenance tenant on our hands who was going to make unreasonable demands before he had even moved in? Well, it turns out that was not the case - I spoke to him first thing in the morning, and I could never had imagined in my entire life what I was about to hear. In our basement, another tenant had moved in - actually several tenants - a whole friggin nest of newly hatched snakes, complete with a 2-3ft mama snake - yes, you read that correctly - in our BASEMENT!!!  Holy smokes. That is definitely worth 5 missed calls.  So it appears that a pregnant snake found a way inside and thought our basement would be a nice warm place to lay her eggs and perhaps spend the winter. I personally would have died if I had been the one to discover this. DIED. Our tenant was actually ok with this, surprised, not overly excited about the situation, but he was calm and cool  (and not crazy!) and we now have someone coming to solve the problem (and I will not be going to inspect the situation, thank you very much).

So there it is. My big 3. I've been trying to figure out what the upside to all of this  is - surely there is something to reflect on, or some lesson to be learned. All I can think of is that we need to take time to enjoy the times of calm in our lives. It is only when things become difficult and challenging that we really appreciate how wonderful it is when the little things in life run smoothly. Before all of this I certainly wasn't thinking how great it was to have a car that worked, a wallet full of id and no wild animals running loose in the house I was about to rent! And in a month from now, when everything in my life is back in order and all of this is (almost) forgotten, I may forget to take a minute to just breathe and appreciate it. I certainly hope I remember to do so (and quickly forget the image of snakes hatching in my basement).

And now a quick note from Caleb, who is sitting patiently beside me waiting to write something. Here it goes - xxoooooooxoxoxooxoxxooooc

Mom, we can only go up from here!