Wednesday, October 21, 2015

October 21 – “Crisis number one”

Crisis number one of the multi-grandchildren spending a few nights with Nana and DadDad has officially occurred.  I know.  Didn’t take long, did it?  When it came time for us to pick up Cailyn from school, I was asleep (not feeling too great).  So Chris sat down all the kids in the office and gave them instructions.  “Josiah, you are to watch Micah with one eye and Jachin with the other.  Micah, you are to watch Jachin with one eye and Josiah with the other.  Jachin, you are to watch Noa with both of your eyes.  And Noa, you watch everybody.  Ultimately, Jachin is in charge.”  There you go.  Sounds easy enough.  She won’t be gone all that long, right?  And I’m right in the next room.  So what could possibly go wrong? 

Not long after Chris left I woke up and staggered into the office.  Four kids sat there quietly.  Should have been my first clue.  Jachin was reading, so he had checked out completely and entered a whole other world.  The other three had books as well, but weren’t quite as engrossed as the elder one.  All seemed well, so I cleared off a chair and joined them.  Mere minutes passed before Chris returned with Cailyn.  And the chaos fairly quickly resumed.  Except for Jachin.  It took a while for the message to reach the alternate universe he was now exploring.  But in that milli-second after Cailyn entered the front door and the rest of the cousins readjusted their throttles to full speed ahead, Chris made her way into the kitchen.  And that’s when I heard the “Oh, no, little leady.  What have you been doing” comment.  At first I assumed she was speaking to Fred.  Would have made perfect sense.  Except Fred was outside with the other dogs.  Nope.  This time the culprit was none other than … two-year-old Noa.  Seems she decided to be helpful during the interval between Chris leaving, Jachin lifting off into inner space, and me waking up.  Best way to do that?  Why feed the fish, of course.  How hard could it be?  She’s seen it done at least once or twice before.  Just a pinch sprinkled on top of the water.  But they looked so hungry.  And those mouths were in a constant state of motion, open, shut, open, shut.  No way just a pinch was going to be enough.  So she did what any concerned animal lover would do.  She dumped in some more food.  Lots more food.  All of the food in the carton. 

I imagine the fish thought they were receiving manna from heaven.  Especially that big one.  But apparently too much food is not good for goldfish.  Imagine that.  Of course that meant emergency remediation would be required.  We looked it up on YouTube – you know, home of all the answers.  I watched a video while Chris texted, then talked to Christina on the phone.  They both said the same thing, but both solutions involved letting water sit overnight.  Christina finally gave the go-ahead to forget about the wait and get the water changed, though.  Easier said than done.  That meant a mad dash to WalMart for distilled water and replacement fish food and one of those little nets to capture them.  That meant dipping for the fish and putting them in a temporary bowl.  That meant draining their bowl and cleaning the pebbles at the bottom.  That meant wiping out the inside of the old bowl.  That meant returning the pebbles.  That meant filling it up with distilled water.  That meant reintroducing the fish into their new clean habitat.  You know what?  That seems like a lot of trouble.  It is very hard for me to treat bait so well.

Hebrews 12:3 says, “Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”


Father, thank you for all those little critters you created that help our kiddos learn about your world.  Amen.

No comments: