I felt like MacGyver

Admist the chaos of sickness (Matt) and grumpiness and disobedience (Ella) we had a moment of fun. It doesn't take much, but I definitely needed something to get Ella out of the funk that had taken over her all day and was making me miserable.

The night before I had taken them to a the Dollar Store to let them each pick out a "treat". Catherine's treat was a little Disney caleidoscope - I think Ella persuaded her to get it so she could play with it. Catherine wasn't too interested in it. In fact she basically threw it out the car door when we got home. It promptly rolled into the drain right outside our house - see below picture.

That drain has become the resting place of many items from the deMontaigne van. Because there is just the slightest bit of an incline at this point in the road, when I open the large door to the van - things tend to just roll right out. I can't tell you how many times we've almost lost the car keys to the drain - usually a result of someone tossing them from the house to someone else at the car or from one side of the car, over the roof, to the other. Yes we are that lazy. And don't assume it's me that's not catching the keys - I'm probably the one throwing it very badly. We even lost one of Catherine's shoes. I meant to try and retrieve it but it rained that night and got washed away. I guess that answers the question of why I am so interested in the weather forecast - it's how I know if I need to do a drain retrieval right away or if it can wait until later.

Anyway - back on track. Ella was so upset about the loss of Catherine's toy. Catherine didn't care a bit. It really put Ella back in the bad mood she had been in all day that had been relieved by getting out of the house and of course a treat from the store. She wanted her daddy to come and get it out of the drain. Of course Matt was still getting over the stomach flu (again.) and not really up to figuring a way to get a cylindrical tube that was stuck 2 feet below a heavy metal grate.

We went to bed and assured Ella we would take care of it the next day. Of course Matt was still exhausted and since he had not been with the miserable Ella all day, getting the caliedoscope was not high on his priority list. But for me, I knew something had to happen to make Ella forget that she was miserable and grumpy and basically driving me insane for the second day in a row (None of this behavior was a result of the missing toy- just the normal cycles of Ella's moods).

I announced with confidence that mommy would get the toy from the drain - I could save the day! I couldn't lift the grate off the drain, but I could rig up something that would allow me to pull the toy up. Right. Did I mention that it was a cylindrical tube? With nothing to hook onto or snag. Well thankfully a friend had dropped their sunglasses in the drain a few weeks ago and we undid a wire got hanger and I was able to hook onto them and pull them up. Piece of cake. I decided the coat hanger trick might be our best option this time around, but I covered the end in packaging tape and bent the middle of the hanger at an angle to try and get underneath the toy.

What a lovely shot, I know. Anyway - as I was doing this I kept thinking to myself that this had to work, because if it didn't I will have made Ella's mood worse by reminding her of the lost toy. And what do you know - it worked. The tape stuck and we pulled the beloved toy out of it's prison. We cheered and high fived and jumped up in down in delight.

And then she played with it for about 30 seconds!