Christmas 2011, the Christmas of the Towels

Christmas Eve, and Mr Claus and I were in the basement wrapping the final presents, and watching old episodes of Men Behaving Badly (yay, Netflix). I asked Husband to pass me a box of tissue, from the other side of the room, and as he pottered over in his socked feet, he paused and asked "why is the carpet wet here?". Yay for the box of tissues, which led us to discover that we have a leak in something (since it hasn't rained for a few days), and that water has been seeping into a corner of the basement, for probably several days (or weeks - who knows). This accounts for the slightly odd smell, which Husband had mentioned the other day, and I'd ignored. Our basement often smells slightly odd. It's usually to do with the dirty socks strewn around.

So the carpet is peeled back, the underlay discarded, and a pretty semi-circle of towels is keeping the water at bay. Towels which every few hours need to be wrung out, bunged in the washing machine and then the dryer (yay, driers.)

We had a lovely Christmas Day. We really did. Then last night, three of the five of us (Husband, me, 7-yo) went down with a bug. Or got up with a bug, I should say. Was it the turkey? Anyway, in these situations, I become a bit obsessive about washing everything: bedding, towels, pyjamas. I also put down a lot of spare towels, a habit which dates back to the days when our children weren't old enough to make it to the bucket, or good enough at aiming even if the bucket was right next to the bed. Thus it was that Husband, seeing me with another load on my way to the washing machine (yay, washing machines) wryly observed "This has been the Christmas of the Towels".

Right. Off to check that our house insurance is up to date.

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