I have to laugh or I'll cry

Today, we are hosting an annual Christmas party for some of the members of the piano studio where both Lauren and William study. Most attendees are people that have been to my house before and have seen both it and me at the worst. (Well, physically at least. They've not seen my screamin' banshee tantrum.) They still call me a friend. But when you play hostess, you start sprucing things up, looking at your house in a way other people might see it.

For some time, we've wanted to paint the walls to better background Anna's paintings. So we did that, which of course made the woodwork look bad, so that was painted as well as the doors, which also needed the glass cleaned. And so on and so on. The more I did, the more that needed to be done.

I suppose I have been working myself into a physical deficit, getting up early, going to bed late. That's when things start going bad, you know? Tempers get a little short. So it was when Daisy, our Beagledor dog was in the garage. Couldn't decide for the life of her whether to do in or go out and it kept messing with the automatic garage door opener as I tried to shut the door. So, forget it, I said and set myself up by leaving the door one foot down from open. Just enough to later catch the top of Eugene and rip a wheel off of the garage door as I tried to back out. I think it can be fixed but I was grateful that dh wasn't too upset with me. Turns out, his generosity was providential.

I had, that day, decided we really, really needed a new toilet seat, and picked up a new one at StuffMart. An instant, easy fix, or so I thought. The bolts on the seat were a bit rusty and try as I might, I could not get them off. Busy with other things, I put that aside for dh to fix later after dinner. That's when I heard a clatter that sounded suspiciously like breaking glass, or shall I say, porcelain. No biggie, there were two large chips out of the side of the bowl, I guess maybe because you can't pound out a bolt from porcelain with a sledgehammer. But then, as a garage door destroyer, I extended the same grace he had extended me. I'd leave the old lid, clean up the toilet a bit, and forget it. Right? Wrong.

William later went to use said facilities and one of the few times he ever does, flushed. "MOM!" he yelled. "There's water shooting out the side of the toilet!" And sure enough, the toilet is a bit more complicated than I thought, and has a channel that was opened with the chip in the bowl, and shoots out water when flushed.

I am trying to be grateful, like Good Shepherd's Care, really I am. I still have two other bathrooms, though upstairs, as this one is OUT OF ORDER for the party. I will remove the hazardous materials warning sign from the girls' bathroom and see if we can get it spruced up for the party today.

I am so not doing this again.