The Day the Pipes Burst continued...

To continue...

Since we had no water after the pipes burst we had to stay with mom.  Here are some of the things that happened there.

I kept getting tripped up on something the whole time I was in the bedrooms, the bathroom, or the hall but I couldn't see it.  Finally, Ben said, "What am I getting caught in?  I can't see it."  So I knew I wasn't crazy and I began to investigate it further.  I reached down to feel the thing and followed it to its source.  It was fishing line and it was literally all over the house.  Ben asked mom why she had fishing line and told her we were getting all caught in it and she said, "Oh!  I have been getting caught in something too!"  There's no telling how long she had been stringing the stuff around because it was everywhere.

Mom offered to make chili for dinner but needed us to get beef.  She asked Ben to get ground chuck to which he replied he would get ground round because "Elizabeth won't eat it if she sees how fatty it is." I said, "I know that ground chuck is fatty.  I don't care what you get because I won't eat it anyway."  When we were going to the store Ben said, "What else does she put in her chili?"  He wanted to know this because, like me, he has learned not to trust anything she serves because there's just no telling how long she's had the stuff.  Around 2008 we found a sausage in her freezer that had expired in 1994 and she defended serving it.  We believe it had even moved houses with her- maybe even twice.  But like I told Ben, even if all the ingredients were new, I still wouldn't eat it because her dishes are never clean.  And I mean they are REALLY dirty.  Ben laughed it off but when we returned and she started making it she was using the same pan that she had used that morning for eggs.  I heard Ben in the kitchen say to her, "Are you sure that chili is going to fit in that pan?"  This was cracking me up because I knew he had seen the dirty pan and was trying to get her to change to another, hopefully cleaner, one.  He came out. looking frightened, and said to me, "Do you know what she was trying to cook the chili in?  The skillet she used for eggs this morning."  I laughed and said I told him so.  He said, "No. It's not just that it was dirty.  She did try to clean it but there were still little brown bits of egg all over it.  But that's not even the problem.  It was a skillet.  The beef wouldn't have even fit in it, much less all of the other ingredients."  Of course needless to say Ben checked before bed and she had left the eye of the stove on, a recurring problem.  

I'm tired again so I'll stop here but I'll more to this one later.