Mountains Out of Molehills

by Kris Pitcher

I was certain our house must be filling up with sewage. We live in a rural area and have a septic tank. Having recently received a notice that it was time to pump the tank, my husband quickly disregarded it.

We are simply two people living in a house with a tank adequate for a family much larger, and in his opinion we have several more years. Then we had at least two weeks of heavy rain. Around the same time the shower sort of slowed, then nearly turned into a tub as it refused to drain.

You can see why I concluded that we must be filling up with a backing up septic tank. I was creating a certain mountain out of this situation. I envisioned running the washing machine while showering and the entire house filling up, sinks backing up, the tub filling. It would be a horrible mess.

Then one day I came to my senses. I grabbed a screw driver, put on a pair of gloves, got some paper towels and knelt down by the shower drain. Prying the drain cover up with the screw driver I released the most disgusting hairball known to mankind.

It was smelly and slimy. I knew it would be gross. I've done this before. That's why I got the gloves, the paper towels and pulled the garbage can close. Sure enough, even with the drain cover and the thing that goes over that to collect the hair, and a fairly good habit of not allowing my curls to go down there...they go down there.

Sorry, now you know for sure I'm gross. Anyway, my mountain was actually a very small molehill. One I took care of all by myself. One I knew exactly how to take care of. One I'd taken care of before.

And your mountain of a weight problem, or getting your exercise in is just the same. It's actually a molehill. You just have to take care of it one thing at a time. You know the right things to do - you've even done them before. But you've worked yourself up about why you can't do them. You've decided why it won't work, or why it's simply too huge to tackle.

It's a molehill. You can do it. You've done it. It's built up over some time because you have ignored it. But it's something you can solve if you just give it some attention. Get your gloves out, roll up your sleeves and do what you need to do. It's your molehill and only you can take care of it. And, no...it's not gross. *smile!