A magic trick.....

Watch this....... I am standing in front of our kitchen sink.... nothing is up my sleeve, nothing is in my pockets....... I am turning on the cold water tap...... and voila! Cold water is coming out of the faucet. Now I am turning on the hot water tap.... and once again-- Hot water is pouring out of the faucet. If that isn't magic, I don't know what is.

You get the idea...... the plumbers were here yesterday and fixed not one, not two, but three broken pipes. We knew about the first two, but were surprised when they found the pipe behind the washing machine had split. And it was a copper pipe, totally insulated. Two plumbers came... and older man and his helper. The older man, I believe, must have been born and bred in Louisiana-- we could hardly understand a word he said.... quick-talking, heavy on the Cajun-accent, and half of his teeth were missing. (Not a judgment, just a fact.) But he knew exactly what needed to be done, and he did it so easily we probably could have blind-folded him and the job still would have been finished correctly.

Everything is nearly back to normal here, except for the laundry. My husband has to put in some new insulation behind the washer, around the new pipes........ then he will put up a little trap door to cover the hole in the wall behind the washer where the plumber had to cut to get to the broken (frozen) pipe. Then back goes the washer, then the dryer.... my laundry room will be up and running again.... and voila! I will be able to do the six loads of laundry that accumulated during the week that I had a bad back ache and the pipes froze because of the single-digit temperatures that blew in from the north. (Take note of this date: I am actually looking forward to doing laundry.)

We had invited friends over here tomorrow for a Valentine's lunch, but we have postponed that till next weekend. We knew the water pipes would be fixed yesterday, but two days just wasn't enough time to get through cleaning and laundry, get grocery shopping and cooking done, and leave my back in good-enough shape to enjoy having company. Everyone certainly understood the problem when I called them a few days ago...... and I apologized for the inconvenience...... and they will all be here next Sunday instead of tomorrow. I hated to postpone, but it was the best thing to do.

Today is a beautiful day....... the temperature is going up and up and up..... we'll be close to 80 degrees within a few days' time... and all will be right in this little corner of the Texas world.

And if all of the above isn't enough to make us smile, my cousin F in NY sent us a box of New York Black & White cookies..... it was a Valentine's surprise for my husband. Of course, I had to taste one...... totally delicious. No one in this state knows what a black & white cookie is, but just one bite of those NY-famous cookies and we both felt like we were standing in a New York bakery. I don't care where you live.... you just cannot beat the bakeries in New York and New Jersey.