Category Archives: Cottage Life

Adventures in Regrets

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I’ve been thinking about regrets this week.  Not big life-changing things. Not even smaller live ‘n’ learn things.  I’m talking about “Oooooh, drat. I knew better than that” things. On most days, if you asked me if I have any regrets in life, I’d say  ‘no’… I’d also probably be lying, since I might regret having posted this photo online, and telling you how it came to pass. 

I’m sure I won’t regret this…    

But, for the most part, I’ve (eventually) learned from my mistakes, and am pretty regret free…or at least I was until this week.  This week, I found myself adding 2 new regrets to my list.  Two regrets in one week?  How could that be?

#2 – Burpees.

At some point in the distant past, I agreed to join the 100-day burpee challenge.  That’s 1 burpee on the 1st day, 2 burpees on the 2nd day, etc. until the 100th miserable day.  On day 8, as I waddled, jumped and flopped through my 8th burpee, and my indolent body was still complaining about the previous 7, burpees had made it onto my regret list.  However, since my sister’s also doing the challenge, it gives us a reason to send each other messages every day.  Since I like my sister, and since burpees are good for me, and since #1 on the list is way worse, burpees will eventually be relieved of their regretful status.

#1 -Bugs.

I check everything  for bugs here.  I shake out my shoes before I put my feet in them, I peek in the kettle every morning before I plug it in, I check my helmet every time I put it on…but I didn’t check my mango bag. A few weeks ago, I wrapped some of the mangoes on my tree in little paper bags, to keep the bugs, birds and squirrels off them as they ripened.  On Monday, I picked a bagged mango and brought it inside. When I opened the bag, I was left standing with a beautiful mango in one hand, an empty bag in the other … and 2 dozen little baby cockroaches scattering across my counter.  Since then, I’ve been finding a disturbing number of adolescent cockroaches partying it up in my pantry.   

That is the kind of regret I’m talking about this week!

Adventures in Rude Awakenings

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It’s 1:30 am, and I’m lying in bed, wide awake and soaking wet. 3 minutes ago, I was lying in bed sound asleep and bone dry. In between, I was startled awake by a terrific crashing sound in my bathroom, followed by the sound of gushing water. In my haste to rouse myself, I got tangled up in my mosquito net, so that the cat, my bed sheet, my mosquito net and I all tumbled out of bed together in a giant mess of mesh, fur and limbs.
As I extricated myself from the mess, my brain was trying to make sense of the sounds coming from my bathroom. “Did my toilet just blow up? Is that possible? Is that even a thing that could happen?” I finally stumbled my way across the 5 feet to the bathroom, and discovered that the faucet in my shower had blown off. Water was gushing out of the pipe in the wall, and the tap that is supposed to be attached to the pipe was on the other side of the bathroom. I have no idea where the water shut-off valve for the house is, so I pushed the faucet back onto the pipe, bathing myself in a watery spray worthy of any plumbing fiasco scene in a comedy.  There I was, spluttering and making dreadful scrunchy faces as I tried to avoid the jets of water spraying everywhere.  Once the tap was back on, I jiggled it to make sure it was secure.  In fact, I tested it so thoroughly that it blew off again, and I had to repeat my spluttering scrunchy-face routine.  After I got it back on the second time, I didn’t test it anymore.  Instead, I turned the tap on a little bit (to ease the pressure?? That seemed to make sense…) and crawled back into bed. I’m going to try to go back to sleep, and hope it doesn’t blow off again ’til morning.