Today started bright an early at 5am because my youngest woke up with an ear ache. She had been kind of sick for a couple days and normally ends up with ear infections when this happens, so it wasn’t unexpected.
My morning consisted of writing and spending time with the two youngest kiddies (who are a tiny bit on the grumpy side because they are both not feeling well…poor munchkins).
I thought it was going reasonably well so I decided that I may as well use the opportunity to shampoo the carpet in the basement. Something I’ve never done before.
That was apparently the worst decision I could have possibly made.
I’m pretty sure ‘Murphy’s Law’ got together with ‘Bad Luck’ and decided to add ‘Holy crap what the hell else could go wrong?’ into the mix just to be safe!
The fact that I’m actually sitting here writing this right now means that I survived…barely, but I’ve got to admit, I am seriously contemplating calling the men in white coats.
It’s not only that I am listening to my youngest crying in her room because I sent her into time-out for blowing bubbles into her milk for the third time (and subsequently getting milk all over the table and floor…again), or that she’s playing with my heart strings by sobbing “But my bones will break if I don’t drink my milk”.
It’s not even that I didn’t manage to get the much needed grocery shopping done today because of the carpet catastrophe.
Nope.
The reason I’m about to go quietly insane is because the house is being shown tomorrow, and once I get the munchkins in bed, because of everything that went wrong today, I’m going to be up until midnight trying to straighten everything out and clean up.
Did I mention I was up until three this morning because I had so much on my mind that I couldn’t sleep, and that I was woken up at five a.m.?
Now don’t get me wrong here… I absolutely LOVE being a mom…but there are days like today where absolutely everything that can go wrong will go wrong…ALL AT THE SAME BLOODY TIME!!!
I’m normally the calmest, happiest, most positive person you will ever meet, but when days like today happen…I struggle very hard to stay sane.
The struggle usually ends up with my teeth clenched, causing a deranged smile on my face that looks more like a constipated grimace than anything that could be considered even remotely reassuring to my young children. I make the attempt for their sake, but since they have been getting nightmares about ‘The Face’ lately, I should probably practice yoga or something instead since I’m definitely not succeeding at pulling off the ‘Everything is ok’ look.
So anyway, my carpet cleaning experience pretty much went like this:
~ Pick up rented carpet cleaning machine from store
~ Pretty much do a handstand to read the instructions on the handle
~ Say the instructions out loud since the blood was rushing to my head, making it difficult to think
~ Repeat this three times until I’m pretty sure I got everything
~ Follow instructions, putting the water in the wrong side of the container so that I’m trying to spray air on to the carpet instead of cleaning solution
~ Call store to ask why it isn’t working
~ Put water in opposite side and feel like an idiot
~ Commence cleaning carpet
~ Call store to say that the machine now squirts the shampoo fine but refuses to suck up said shampoo from carpet resulting in a frothy lake in my basement
~ Firmly shut lid to create a seal so that the machine gets suction…feel like an idiot again
~ Suck up lake and start over
~ Realize the machine gets nowhere near the edge of the wall and I have forgotten the attachments at the store
~ Walk into store feeling like an idiot…again
~ Attach hose and move parts around to change it to the ‘Upholstery’ setting so that I could use the hose attachment (admit that I had to look up how to spell upholstery)
~ Start using the hand held thingy to get close to the wall. Works great until I try to suck up liquid.
~ Watch helplessly as shampoo gushes out of machine
~ Hang head with tears in eyes. Refuse to call store again. Stomp around yelling incoherently.
~ Calm down and get my wet/dry shop vac out.
~ Alternate spraying shampoo with machine and using shop vac to suck shampoo up while swearing endlessly in my head.
~ Finally finish, clean machine, return it to store, get home, tell kids I need five minutes alone, lie in bed, cry.
~ Get a total of three minutes before children knock on my door saying they are hungry because supper is late.
~ Pretend everything is fine and go make them supper (which ends up with the whole milk situation and my child crying herself to sleep within minutes of being sent to her room because she was so tired)
~ Feel like the world’s most terrible mother. Cry some more.
~ Realize tomorrow is another day, decide to blog, giggle as I re-read the crap that happened today
So…that’s my day so far. Now I must start cleaning up for the showing tomorrow.
I swear…these people BETTER buy my house after all of this :/
UPDATE: They did! 😀