The Nitty Gritty

There are a lot of glamorous shots on this blog. A lot of stunning beaches, fun outings, beautiful friends, amazing dates and yummy dishes. But to those of you feeling a tad bit jealous, this post is especially for you.

As a disclaimer, I truly love our life here. I love this adventure and how God is moving and growing me. We are blessed beyond words to have met incredible friends and plugged into an awesome church in such a short amount of time. But, like anywhere, there are still down times here. This weekend was a great example. We planned on having a very low key Friday night, grilling fish, walking to TCBY, and then watching a movie at home. The moon was gorgeous this night - did anyone else get to see that? I grabbed my camera but it was really too pretty to capture.


After eating dinner I asked Brent to quickly take a look at our washer. It hadn't been draining or spinning and I hoped it would be a simple fix. Brent actually did fix that problem (we googled it!), but in the process the hose connecting the washer to the water broke, and GALLONS of water starting spilling out. Within seconds, the kitchen floor was covered in water. Brent and I completely panicked. We have a neighbor next door who is a landlord so I ran over to ask how to shut off the water. It was probably only gushing for 5 minutes, but the entire apartment had several inches of water covering the floor. That was not a good feeling.

It took two hours, but we were able to get all the water out. I used the big broom from the tennis courts to sweep out large amounts, and Brent used a towel to soak up water in the bathroom and bedroom. What a night! We were actually really fortunate because hardly anything was damaged. We don't have carpet or hardwood floors, and the couch and chairs are on pedestals so the fabric didn't get wet. The Roomba was saved, and all my computer cords were moved before the water reached them. The only real causality was my collection of cookbooks - which dried under the fans for a couple days. I was very, very sad about this (I'm the type who doesn't even like to get a drop of oil on my cookbooks), but Brent correctly keeps reminding me that they are still usable.


We had someone reconnect the washer on Saturday. I was incredibly relieved that we didn't have to wait till Monday to turn the water back on!


So there you have it. There are bad days in Grand Cayman. They may not always make the blog (mostly because I don't think to take pictures during these times), but they are out there. There's the time our water heater broke, and the time a rat died in the back panel of our stove and it took us over a week to find it. (Too much information?) There's the day that I don't carefully examine produce prices and later realize that I just spent $15.66 on four tomatoes. Oops. But this post isn't to complain or elicit pity. It's more of a reality check that life remains "real" no matter where you live. For the most part, we can look back and laugh at the comedy of it all.

Don't worry, "The Grand Life" is still pretty darn grand.

(Peeping Tom caught looking though our living room window)