No use crying over spilled milk...

or, is there? Well, I think sometimes, it is absolutely acceptable to cry over spilled milk. In fact, when Owen was a baby and a bottle of my breast milk spilled, I cried. Breast milk is often referred to as "liquid gold" and to lose it certainly breaks a nursing mother's heart. Well, I can only wish now that just one bottle of my breast milk spilled. But, unfortunately, we lost TWENTY EIGHT bags, an average of about 4 ounces each, of my milk last week. So, lets just say that crying is an understatement...I was flat out sobbing! We have been keeping all of the milk in a deep freezer in the garage and taking out what we need as we need it. Well, we returned from the lake last Tuesday night and I asked Randy to go get 4 ounces out for the babysitter the next morning while I went to my client. He came back upstairs a few minutes later, pale as a ghost, and said, "I have really really really bad news!" I had no idea what to expect, but when he told me that all of my milk had thawed out, I was absolutely devastated. It took me a second to process and then it hit me like a ton of bricks and the sobbing began. I could not get control of myself. Slowly but surely, I began to calm down and get myself together, but the crying continued in waves the rest of the night.

What on earth happened? Well, on June 25th, Randy was pressure washing the deck and the outlet outside got wet. Power was lost to that outlet and we knew there was a blown fuse somewhere. We then realized that the outlets in both bathrooms upstairs were out as well. After checking the fuses to all of those outlets, Randy couldn't figure out what the problem was. But, we weren't too concerned because we could function without those. We planned to call an electrician this week and not worry too much about it, since we didn't need those blown outlets to function and we really didn't have the time to deal with it until after vacation. Unfortunately, it wasn't until we returned from the lake last Tuesday night that we realized we should have checked all of the outlets (at least the important ones). The outlets on the front and back porches are GFCI (the kind you have to test and reset) outlets and when one blows, all of them in the house (and outside) blow. Unfortunately, we didn't realize the outlet in the garage was one of these outlets until over a week later, which meant we lost all of that milk we had stored in the deep freezer. After learning this, Randy was able to determine where the blown fuse was...in the garage outlet!!! So, now all of our outlets are working again, but just a little too late :(

Now, a week later, I have been able to replace 7 of those bags and I am at a better place about things. I realize that I need to just be thankful for my blessings and thankful for the health of my children and not worry so much about what was lost. That can be replaced. A little time and perspective is what I needed to get myself to a point where I was OK with what happened. I can't say that it doesn't still sting, though, because that was a lot of pain and hard work that went into that milk, given that most of it was from when Anderson was first born and my milk first came in. But, now I realize that there are much worse things that I could be facing and I just need to move on, with thankfulness for what I did NOT lose! I will now say with confidence, though, that crying over spilled milk is absolutely acceptable!!