Right when we walked into our first rental back in March I thought two things:
A) Wow! Andy did a great job picking this one and
2) Good heavens, the land lady did not get the memo about threedestructive small children because the tchotchkes and bric-a-brac were everywhere.
Lots of sports memorabilia and grapes.
Plastic, not real.
The grapes, I mean.
But after I moved all the fun stuff to higher ground and established some serious rules about the NON-TOUCHING of the EYE LEVEL TO A PRESCHOOLER flat screen television I felt pretty good about our situation.
But what I didn't realize was I should have been preaching to someone a little taller.
Someone who is a little clumsy, somewhat klutzy and claims to be in charge of this circus.
Me.
Yes indeedy, the very first week we were there I tossed a pillow from the bed in the dark of night, for what reason, I'm not sure and totally took out the floor lamp on my side.
It seems I'd forgotten where I was.
That happens to mequite often sometimes in the night.
I blame baseball.
And too much caffeine.
Anyhoo, the noise woke both of us and I jumped up to turn on the light only I couldn't because
it was lying on the floor. Completely severed in half.
Good news, it still worked.
Bad news, it was hanging by a thread. If pottery has threads.
Okay it was hanging by a shard.
It was in bad shape.
A few weeks later I was vacuuming our bed* while I had a grumpy Emily on my hip when I smelled something burning. Which was odd. But I continued on because someone-who-shall-remain-nameless gets a little irritated when he crawls into bed at night and finds crumbs on his side.
I don't know what his problem is.
But I was being a good wife, working to get all the crumbs out of his side while trying to comfort Em who was not enjoying the noise and the STENCH that was now coming from the vacuum.
When finally I turned to check out what the problem was I screamed because there was a foot of
smoke rising from the hoover.
A FOOT.
OF ACTUAL SMOKE.
LIKE THE KIND ASSOCIATED WITH FIRE.
I screamed, dropped fussypants onto the bed and jerked the machine back only to see
Andy's favorite shorts,
lying on the ground, with a
huge hole burned into the waistband.
His favorite, irreplaceable, lastspring-trainingwiththeMets shorts.
Son of a gun.
Did I mention that the Mr. came home right in the middle of all this?
And that our room REEKED for hours afterward?
A stinky reminder of his loss.
And my awesomeness.
Thankfully, the vacuum seemed to be okay, and we managed to muddle through the next few months without further incident.
From me.
Then three days before we were to be out (two days before we found out we weren't going to Montana) I was in the bathroom getting ready for the day when I heard Emily say
Uh-oh.
Listen, if a two-year-old says those words, you know it's bad.
And it was.
She had torn a strip of wallpaper right off the wall.
Fan-flippin-tastic.
It seemed to be a pretty clean tear, so I thought I might be able to salvage it.
With the super glue that I'd purchased to repair the lamp.
Only I didn't get a chance to use it because Andy had already told on me (punk**) and the owners weren't too upset about the lamp's demise.
So later that day I got the girls settled with a snack and their pal Dora (because one should never trust toddlers around glue of any sort).
I sat down and eyeballed the strip a few times, lining it up and measuring like I knew exactly what was going on and then I just went for it.
Squeezed that super glue out and then carefully placed the strip back onto the wall.
Eureka! Perfect! YES! MAMA RULES! Wait a minute...um, i seem to have...uh, humphff...this could be a problem....
Lainey! Hurry and get mama a washcloth!
Why?
I've glued my thumb to the wall!
Why'd you do that?
JUST GET THE WASHCLOTH!
run, run, scamper, scamper
Great job, sweets! No, no wait, mama needs it to be wet...
run, run, scamper, scamper
I can't reach the sink, mama.
Why not!?!?
Cuz, you're sitting on the stool.
And so I was.
And that's when I knew that they only way I was gonna get out of this one was to
rip another hole in the paper.
Son of a stinkin' gun.
A) Wow! Andy did a great job picking this one and
2) Good heavens, the land lady did not get the memo about three
Lots of sports memorabilia and grapes.
Plastic, not real.
The grapes, I mean.
But after I moved all the fun stuff to higher ground and established some serious rules about the NON-TOUCHING of the EYE LEVEL TO A PRESCHOOLER flat screen television I felt pretty good about our situation.
But what I didn't realize was I should have been preaching to someone a little taller.
Someone who is a little clumsy, somewhat klutzy and claims to be in charge of this circus.
Me.
Yes indeedy, the very first week we were there I tossed a pillow from the bed in the dark of night, for what reason, I'm not sure and totally took out the floor lamp on my side.
It seems I'd forgotten where I was.
That happens to me
I blame baseball.
And too much caffeine.
Anyhoo, the noise woke both of us and I jumped up to turn on the light only I couldn't because
it was lying on the floor. Completely severed in half.
Good news, it still worked.
Bad news, it was hanging by a thread. If pottery has threads.
It was in bad shape.
A few weeks later I was vacuuming our bed* while I had a grumpy Emily on my hip when I smelled something burning. Which was odd. But I continued on because someone-who-shall-remain-nameless gets a little irritated when he crawls into bed at night and finds crumbs on his side.
I don't know what his problem is.
But I was being a good wife, working to get all the crumbs out of his side while trying to comfort Em who was not enjoying the noise and the STENCH that was now coming from the vacuum.
When finally I turned to check out what the problem was I screamed because there was a foot of
smoke rising from the hoover.
A FOOT.
OF ACTUAL SMOKE.
LIKE THE KIND ASSOCIATED WITH FIRE.
I screamed, dropped fussypants onto the bed and jerked the machine back only to see
Andy's favorite shorts,
lying on the ground, with a
huge hole burned into the waistband.
His favorite, irreplaceable, lastspring-trainingwiththeMets shorts.
Son of a gun.
Did I mention that the Mr. came home right in the middle of all this?
And that our room REEKED for hours afterward?
A stinky reminder of his loss.
And my awesomeness.
Thankfully, the vacuum seemed to be okay, and we managed to muddle through the next few months without further incident.
From me.
Then three days before we were to be out (two days before we found out we weren't going to Montana) I was in the bathroom getting ready for the day when I heard Emily say
Uh-oh.
Listen, if a two-year-old says those words, you know it's bad.
And it was.
She had torn a strip of wallpaper right off the wall.
Fan-flippin-tastic.
It seemed to be a pretty clean tear, so I thought I might be able to salvage it.
With the super glue that I'd purchased to repair the lamp.
Only I didn't get a chance to use it because Andy had already told on me (punk**) and the owners weren't too upset about the lamp's demise.
So later that day I got the girls settled with a snack and their pal Dora (because one should never trust toddlers around glue of any sort).
I sat down and eyeballed the strip a few times, lining it up and measuring like I knew exactly what was going on and then I just went for it.
Squeezed that super glue out and then carefully placed the strip back onto the wall.
Eureka! Perfect! YES! MAMA RULES! Wait a minute...um, i seem to have...uh, humphff...this could be a problem....
Lainey! Hurry and get mama a washcloth!
Why?
I've glued my thumb to the wall!
Why'd you do that?
JUST GET THE WASHCLOTH!
run, run, scamper, scamper
Great job, sweets! No, no wait, mama needs it to be wet...
run, run, scamper, scamper
I can't reach the sink, mama.
Why not!?!?
Cuz, you're sitting on the stool.
And so I was.
And that's when I knew that they only way I was gonna get out of this one was to
rip another hole in the paper.
Son of a stinkin' gun.
I managed to scrape some of it off and kinda hodge-podged it back onto the wall.
To add injury to insult, my thumb was bright red for days.
But all's well that ends well because at our walk-through a few days later the owner didn't even mention it.
When I thanked her for the extra time she had generously given me to get our stuff out she said
No problem, I just had to reschedule the work-crew I have coming in.
Oh yeah, are you remodeling?
No, nothing major.
They're just stripping the wallpaper.
Son of a stinkity-stink gun.
________________________________________________________
* I may or may not have needed to remove the crumbs because I may or may not have consumed half a bag of barbecue potato chips during rest time.
** He's not a punk. He's actually quite wonderful. Not once did he fuss at me for ruining his beloved shorts. Or for serving chicken for a record 47 nights in a row from March into April.
Two words: so funny!
ReplyDelete