T.M.I.

Usually T.M.I. stands for Too Much Information, but today I'm changing it. It's gonna stand for Tender Mercy and Inspiration.

So, last night as I was sleeping in my Alabama hotel room bed I was awakened by my child. I got up and put his pacifier in to see if he'd go back to sleep. It worked for about an hour.

Around 3:00am he wasn't going back to sleep by himself so Brig had gone and picked him up and had him sleeping on his chest.

About 15 minutes later we heard this rushing noise coming from the bathroom. I was thinking it was just the toilet making noise like they sometimes do, but I got up anyway to check it out. As I walked into the bathroom I was greeted with a mini flood. Our hot water pipe to the sink had busted open and was spraying everywhere.

After some quick thinking I got down and turned the water off, but it still had already flooded into the hall/closet, which is doubling as Andy's room.

Brig called the front desk and they said they would send maintenance over first thing in the morning. (There was no on-call maintenance... a slight oversight in my opinion.) They also asked if we wanted to move rooms.

No. Thank you. I just want to go back to bed.

So, while I fed Andy, Brig mopped up the floor and used some duct tape to semi-fix the leak. Even though I had turned the water off it was still dripping pretty good. We put the garbage can under the pipe to catch the water. I got up every hour for the rest of the night to dump the water out into the tub.

Maintenance arrived around 7:20am and the pipe was fixed before the hour was up. Thank you maintenance!

Now back to the title.... T.M.I.

I like to believe that my little micro man was inspired to wake us up around 3:00am so that we would be coherent enough to think clearly at 3:15am.

It was a tender mercy that Andy wasn't in his crib when it was flooding. And it was a tender mercy that I learned approximately 8 years ago to turn off the water when bad things happen in the bathroom.

I reminisced about that situation last night with Brig when he told me he was impressed with how quickly I responded.

That's actually a pretty funny story.

I was a freshman in high school at the time. On our band trip to Las Vegas.

It was another hotel room experience, but this time it was in St. George and I was rooming with two of my good friends.

I had gone down for breakfast already and was sitting outside when Erica and Ruth yelled to me from the window to come up. And to hurry!

When I got to the room there was water spraying out of the toilet tank. It was like it was raining in the bathroom.

I may or may not have clogged the toilet the previous night, which then caused the toilet to make a funny noise, which then caused Erica and Ruth to attempt to silence the noise.

Hence the spraying water.

I'm not sure exactly what happened, but if I recall correctly... (you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong Erica)... they took off the tank lid and somehow disconnected the hose.

In a panic I called my mom (who was one of the chaperons for the trip).

When I told her the toilet was spraying water and we didn't know what to do she said, "Just turn the water off." When she said that, I took it as.... duh, everybody knows that you're supposed to turn the water off in emergencies like this.

So, the problem was resolved and I was prepared for last night's events 8 years in advance. :)