This past month has been, well let’s just say it’s been, not even sure of what word to use…frustrating, upsetting, demanding?  You get the idea.  But it sure is nice to have tiny occurrences of “yipee!” time even if they are alongside a few “sigh” moments.

Let’s start with a sigh moment.  Night before last I was taking a shower (yes I do that from time to time here!) and just as I was done rinsing the water suddenly stops flowing.  And since I live in Kenya and expect sudden stops in electricity and/or water I simply got out of the shower, dressed and went to check on the pump situation.  Yup, we had run out of water.  We began pumping it and Chuck then had water for showering 🙂

Last night we got a stomach turning phone call.  No one from the states normally calls us on the phone so when Chuck looked at an incoming call and saw it was his dad our hearts dropped….someone must have died and it must be someone close was our immediate thought.  Chuck answered the phone and said “dad?” to which there was a brief moment of silence (making the heart drop even more) and dad says “is this my son?” “Yes, it’s your oldest son.  What’s happening?”  Dad begins laughing and says he must have hit Chuck’s number while scrolling through his contacts.  To his defense he does have a new smart phone and he’s getting used to working it!  We felt an immediate sense of relief but also told him he was probably paying $1.50 a minute for this mistake!  So we hung up and skyped with him and mom!  That was a yipee moment.

During skype it seemed the internet was not cooperating (big surprise) and finally disconnected us from the call.  Skype kept saying we were offline but the computer showed we were still connected.  I took out the dongle for the wi-fi, checked the balance of our internet and found we had run out of credit.  While I was checking this Chuck’s phone began ringing with a skype call from dad so I answered it (Chuck was out dealing with issues at the time) and we continued the conversation on the phone skype.  Chuck came in, we talked a bit more and then we got a message on Chuck’s phone saying our internet was below 2mb.  Meaning we’d have to finish the conversation quickly but at least we got to say we love you!

After that it took Chuck about half an hour to figure out which internet package we would get (the provider has done a lot of changes, and not for the benefit of the customer that’s for sure), send airtime to the dongle from his phone, purchase an internet bundle from the dongle (which we plug into the computer for this) and then replug it back into the router and see if it’s working…..yup, it’s working!

Now let me go back before the skype call.  Some of you know with the instant hot showers in Kenya you have to flip a switch (like a light switch) in order to turn on the power to the heater in the shower head.  Ignore the missing tiles, when you fix something in Kenya you settle for what can be done and forget how it actually looks.

So as I’m taking a shower I realize the water is getting hotter and hotter, I hear a ‘pop’ in the shower head, immediately think I’m going to be electrocuted and the water suddenly turns very, very cold.  Something electrical in the shower head had blown.  Unfortunately I was covered in soap so I grabbed a towel and went to the guest bathroom.  Thankfully that shower was working and I was able to rinse off.  I told Chuck about the issue so he’d be aware and not take a cold shower.  When he was ready to shower he went to the guest bath.  I went to ask him something and heard a strange water noise coming from the shower, not like a normal shower.  Now, again the shower heads are a bit different here and they have a small tube extending out the back of it so a hose with a handheld shower head can be used (we don’t use it in our bath but you can see the tube in the above picture).  Apparently the hose had come loose from the tube and Chuck was trying to shower under that little stream of water.  Here you can see the tube and the hose.  Guess I’ll have to find a better way of attaching these two together.

So now neither shower is working, unless of course you want to take a cold shower or a shower with a single stream of water….both of which we’ve done and will do again!

But another yipee moment is right around the corner.  We got to skype with our youngest son, Mark, this morning!  It’s always a bright moment when I get to see one of my kids, talk with them and hear how things are going.  I sure do miss them.

Another yipee moment….the fence in the backyard is complete and Bear and Pixie love the space!

Pixie

Bear

And so do Max and George when they come over on Sunday’s for play dates!

There you have it, a few yipee/sigh moments of life at C4KK.