Many parts of the northern Caribbean have been suffering through drought conditions and having to deal with fires as a result. Here in our part of the Dominican Republic, we have had a little relief from the drought in the past few weeks, and I’m grateful.

I don’t remember for sure, but I think I’ve mentioned in the past that we’ve had some plumbing problems in our apartment. Fortunately, they have been repaired. Twice. Now we have everything – the walls and floors – all patched up and re-tiled. Then yesterday, we came home from the office to a flood of water in our laundry room and seeping through the concrete wall to run down and make a big puddle in the hallway as well. And so the soggy saga continues.

Last night Mr Hot Stuff spent quite a bit of time working on a solution to make the water drain outside of our apartment rather than reflood our laundry room and possibly everywhere else while we slept. The final solution was a foil “riverbed” lined with plastic wrap that would channel the water from the leaking pipe, out the fire escape doorway (we had to remove the door for this) and run down into a big bucket on the landing below. Even though we had turned off both our hot and cold water lines, they were still leaking, so we had to come up with some sort of temporary solution to minimize potential damage.

All of this is lead-up to this – I’m going to share two short videos that I call Grammagrams to show you what this morning looks like, before the plumber arrives.

Most days I have been trying to make a short video to send to my grandchildren. It’s just a way I try to reach out and stay in touch, and remind them that I love them and I’m thinking of them. These are not glamorous, edited videos. They are just me doing a messy job of it, but having a good time trying to stay awake to the wonder of ordinary things. I call these little videos GrammaGrams, and I’m going to share today’s two little videos with you here. Again, please realize and accept that there is nothing glamorous or professional about these and just enjoy the peek into our apartment water adventure.

It’s looking like we might, maybe might, have water by tonight. They are working really hard to fix it right now. Our laundry room might be a mess still, but I think they’ll have the problem fixed. I hope.

I just had the handyman tell me, with 100% seriousness, to recycle (reuse) the foil that we used to make our “riverbed” to make baked sweet potatoes. Now I KNOW I have a modern first-world mindset. My grandparents would have done that during and after the depression. I know it’s frugal, but alas, I won’t do it. I’m checking to see if anyone wants to reuse our foil and decrease my environmental impact. So far, no takers.

I actually think there was some sort of high-pressure event that triggered this, but I can’t seem to convey that very accurately to the repair people. It’s possible they understand me perfectly but can’t convey to me, in a way I’ll understand, why that is not what happened. Ah, the joys of working with a language barrier.

Have a beautiful day, friends! Be grateful for the ordinary things.

Always be joyful. 

Never stop praying. 

Be thankful in all circumstances,

for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

1 Thesalonians 5:16-18 NLT