It was almost a year ago that madness and mayhem struck the O.K. Chorale. A skillful (not) subcontractor digging to make a new sidewalk hit the curbstop that takes water from the main pipe in the street to our home. He looked around to see if he’d been seen, plugged the marking stick back in the dirt, smoothed out his tracks, and went on working.

The short story is this: his action led to water saturating the ground, pouring into the basement, and the attempt at repair led to a broken gas pipe and evacuation from our home with my purse, phone, our prescription meds, and the clothes on our backs.

The latest reminder of The Disaster came in the form of a dozen roses. I know we own vases, I know they’re in the basement, but I couldn’t find them. Due to The Flood, everything got moved and rearranged in the basement. I said rearranged, not reorganized. We’re still working on that.

The result? Hey, we’re nothing if not resourceful.