In the last 24 hours, the following events have occurred:

1) my wife fell down the last two steps in our house and sprain her ankle.
2) my oldest got sick at 3 a.m.
3) my youngest got diarrhea
4) my youngest on one of his bathroom trips decided to take an entire roll of toilet paper in the toilet and mind you, we only have one toilet in our house.
5) it took over 2 1/2 hours to unstop the toilet.
6) it is snowing and that is on top of ice that is already on the ground.
7) now the oldest has diarrhea.
8) and I really need a nap.

The last 24 hours have been beyond stressful. My wife getting hurt, of course happened when I was an hour out of town and on my way to a out of state meeting. So we had to get help from wife’s father’s girlfriend who just so happened to be in town. But I learned a few things about life and about myself over the course of the last 24 hours.

1) A dishwasher tablet can dissolve the toilet paper enough to flush it, but it took me over 2 hours to get this dissolve.  This article was a life saver at 4 a.m.

2) I got really frustrated about the toilet and I remembered the time when I wrecked my jeep and had to call my dad. I was scared to death at how angry he was going to be. And when my father got to me, he put his arm around me and very quietly said, “This too can be fixed.”

3) Life is hard, but there are always people that have it just a little bit harder and this was a reminder of that.

So in summary, the last 24 hours have not been fun, but in comparison to many, the last 24 hours have not been that bad.