December showers

YA KNOW…have you ever had the feeling that somebody (possibly Coyote, or maybe Loki) is just messin’ with ya?

Wouldn’t put it past either of them, either.

Today has been that kind of day. The kind of day where one damned thing after another has just gone improbably wrong.

The van is making a weird squeaky noise whenever I make a right turn while applying the brakes. The light in the closet won’t work. Again. One of the other fixtures has a burnt out bulb. I have a replacement bulb. But I can’t for the life of me get the damned cover off the damned bulb so I can replace it. ARGH.

The Dyson? Has lost suction. Excuse me, but WHAT?! (Probably an overly packed washable filter. But still. WHAT?!)

The cat pooped in the Man Cave, again. (HAHAHAHAHA! Ahem. I mean, wow, what a drag, huh?)

Then the phone rang and it was Danger Mouse asking if I could drop everything and rush over to bring her six dollars for the Secret Santa shop.

I said no.

An hour later, she called back to say her lungs hurt (???) and could I come get her. Only after I picked her up did I realize I’d been played. Call first with something trivial to confirm that mom is indeed home and can pick you up, then invent good symptoms you haven’t tried before but that someone else has had good luck with, and call back. Genius.

Soon Captain Adventure arrived home and, having earned his Wii, got busy building improbably complicated rollercoaster rides for marbles. Eldest got home. Danger Mouse enjoyed a miraculous recovery. Then she wanted to take a shower, and I said, distractedly because I was still working on that last official work email of the day, “Fine, go for it.”

{send!}, and I turned to dealing with the precarious pile of crap on my desk. About half an hour later, Eldest came up and said, “Uh, mommy? Yeah. The, uh, the toilet? It’s bubbling.”

NOW…I’m picturing, you know, a couple big bubbles. I start to say something like, “Why are you bugging me about bubbles in the toilet?” Because, really?

But she heads me off.

“No, mommy? It’s really bubbling. Like, foaming?”

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!

So I charge off down there and sure enough, the toilet is rabid. It is foaming. It is overflowing. The bubbles, they are legion. It is the single most weird thing I have ever seen a toilet do.

And.
I.
Can’t.
Make.
It.
STOP.

I try the plunger. I turn off the water supply. What the hell did these kids…wait. The…it’s…it’s coming from…wait…now, that just can’t be…

I glanced over into the bathtub beside it.

Foam is surging up out of its drain as well.

Oh…now…that can’t be good…

Now, I am no plumber. But I’m looking at this and I’m thinking that clearly, this isn’t a case of somebody dropping a bath bomb into the toilet. It’s more like…like…somebody is draining a bathtub, and it’s getting down but not out and then it…wait…shower, @*^&@ing SHOWER…!!!!!

So I abandoned the sinking ship downstairs, ran upstairs like I was twenty years younger, and started banging on the bathroom door screaming, “GET OUTTA THE SHOWER! TURN THE WATER OFF, TURN THE DAMNED WATER OFF AND GET OUTTA THAT SHOWER, NOW!!!!!”

Because I am cool and calm and collected at times like these, you see. (Well, and also because Danger Mouse is going, “Whaaaaaat?” in that little reedy-dreamy voice of hers, and the water IS STILL RUNNING!)

Then the bathroom door opens, emitting a tremendous cloud of steam, and I find myself staring at…well.

This is one of those moments where you find yourself really wondering about your offspring.

Because…pee in the toilet.

Sinks slowly, ever-so-slowly, draining an unctuous mixture of mud and silt and debris back down the pipe (awesome, I’m sure that’s helpful).

One of the sinks…had…a…towel…in it…? (what the @*^&@?!)

And, in the tub she was just standing in, a fairly disgusting swirl of thick mud all over the bottom of it. (Eeeeeyeah. I’m thinking it’s a blocked sewer line too. Joy!)

I point all this disaster area out to her, my otherwise intelligent child, and she’s all like, “Oh. Wow. Didn’t notice that. Or that. Or that. Or that either.”

And of course, it was Not Me that did all of it. If I ever catch that little gremlin, I’m gonna string him up, I swear I am…

And then, as I’m just sort of standing there embracing the moment…I realize that it’s almost 7:00, and if I don’t move it I’m going to be late picking up Boo Bug. (Oh yeah…thought there was something missing…)

Naturally, there was some Big Event going on at the school. And I didn’t grab my jacket on my way out the door because I was late and eh, it’s, like, three feet from the van to the center.

Unless of course there’s an Event going on at the school. In that case, you have to park five miles and hoof it in…in the pouring rain…without a jacket…

Ah, December showers. Lovely, icy-cold December showers…they’re so…bracing, aren’t they?!

(I’d ask “what next,” but…I’m scared to…)