The Gifts That Keep On Giving

It seems my suspicions have officially been validated. My plumber finally showed up yesterday while I was picking Ro up from school. Ate was home with the babysitter, so she let big ol' plumber M. in and he went right to work.

When I arrived home with Ro, I made a beeline for my powder room, and there it was - the stench. And also, the toilets tank cover sitting on the sink counter and on top of that, what used to be a pretty pink princess toothbrush. I hesitate to tell you what color it was now. Either way, an expensive toothbrush, as I was now 75 bucks poorer.

Now that I realize that Ate has undoubtedly moved on from just flushing the toilet for flushing sake, to taking pride in actually watching objects disappear with a swipe of this miraculous flushing handle, I need to either lock up every small object in the house, or lock up one little boy.

I remember my mother-in-law telling me that her five boys were toilet obsessed and it was only a nuisance until actual jewelry went missing. I blame my husband then - genetics.

And now to completely digress from this topic which I hope never has to be revisited,
the weirdest thing happened the other day. Well it wasn't so weird, but it teaches us a lesson about including cards in our gifts.

My husband came home from work Tuesday night and walked over to me with a beautiful shiny silver box with a light blue bow on it from Nordstrom.

"I brought you a gift Honey."

It's not my birthday, not my anniversary, so either this is not really for me or who the heck are you and what have you done with my husband. I'm going with, this is not really for me.

Apparently he found it on our doorstep. There was no card on the outside so I obviously had to open it. Inside was a baby keepsake book and a matching photo album in lovely shades of silver and pastel. It was the sort of thing I would give as a baby gift as well, only mine would come from Target, not Nordstrom. Also inside there was - no card.

Who leaves a gift like that on someones doorstep without a card? I could not imagine that this gift was intended for me, because my last baby was born over two years ago. I had to actually think about it, but then I realized I do have a neighbor who had a baby boy a month ago. So I called her and left a message which she returned the next day.

"Hi, Orah, I am returning your call."

"Oh yes Y. I called because the weirdest thing...I found this box on my doorstep..."

Immediately interrupted, "Oh I am so happy this is why you are calling because T. left a message on my machine that she left a gift on my doorstep, and when I looked there was nothing there, so I thought someone stole something off my doorstep and that is very disconcerting..."

Well I am happy we cleared that up. All I can say is T. has taught us a good lesson. Always include the card, because I was about to keep that really nice gift from Nordstrom.

And one other thing that occurred yesterday and made me very happy. My 35 battery operated water fountains for the centerpieces of the banquet I am working on have arrived. I can only connect this to the preceding story by the fact that when my neighbor came to pick up the gift and when the UPS guy arrived I was still wearing my "breath right" strip on my nose. It would be very nice if I could breathe right without it. Of course then I would be able to better smell the stench that my plumber so generously left behind. (like my connections of random stories?)