Misery, thy name is Murphy

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

I'm not exactly sure why I'm writing this, since I'm not particularly keen to remember what was quite possibly one of the worst days, taken as a sum of its parts, I've had in quite some time. I mean, I've had some truly horrific days, to be sure. But yesterday was one where it just seemed to be one thing after another. You know what I mean; one of those days.

The day started off with an errant rule in my mail program that caused every single e-mail from the past four years to be unceremoniously removed from its respective folder dumped into a single folder. Thousands of e-mails had to be re-categorized and re-filed.

I stopped at the store on the way home, and they were out of the one product I needed. Not really that big a deal, sure, but still a "Seriously? Come on!" moment.

I got home to find the kids, who had the day off from school, were playing video games, while not a single chore had been done. Dog poop in the hallway. Dishes stacked on the counter and in the sink, leaving absolutely no room to prepare dinner. Opening the dishwasher, I lost my balance and tumbled into the bread drawer, which had been left open, breaking the face clean off. Then the missus tells me the shelf in the bathroom — you know, the one with the candles on it? — had just fallen down, bringing a lit candle with it, which proceeded to break in the bathtub, but not before spilling hot, molten wax all over the wall, toilet, tub and everything else.

Wanting to unwind, if even for a moment, I went up to smoke my pipe to find the tobacco completely dried out; it was like smoking kindling, but I did it anyway. The kids were told to take care of the dishes and other chores.

When I went back down, they'd taken care of them all right: they'd literally stuffed them in the already full dishwasher. I've had a standing rule for years that only the adults run the dishwasher, and for good reason. Fortunately, only one glass was broken.

While dinner was cooking, I installed the stereo receiver and speakers in the bedroom, so the DVD player there (sans TV) could be used as a CD player. I brought the receiver and speakers up, only to realize I'd forgotten the speaker wire. I trudged from the third floor to the basement, found the wire, and cut two pieces to a little over two feet apiece so that there wouldn't be a lot of extra wire stuffed behind the shelf. Got back upstairs to find I'd also forgotten the cord for the receiver, so back to the basement I went. Back on the third floor, I started to attach the speaker wire to the receiver and discovered I had forgotten to strip it. Back down and back up. Then found I also hadn't stripped the other wire. Back down and up again. Attached the wires to the receiver but they were a bit short for attaching to the speakers, so I had to crawl on my belly to get them attached. However, once attached, the length was perfect. Whew.

To finish dinner, I had to microwave the baked potatoes. I put the largest in to cook first, turned around to check the pork chops, and realized how quiet the kitchen was. The circuit had blown. Back down to the basement to flip the breaker.

After dinner, I had to take care of the drawer. It was a total loss, so the missus and I decided to scrap it and simply glue the drawer face to the cabinet. (Not the ideal solution, but the cabinets are old and crappy and need replacing anyway.) Whoever installed them was apparently an idiot. They've never opened and closed perfectly smooth, and that's because the tracks were installed at odd angles, and some drawers' wheels don't even run on said tracks. After fifteen minutes of finagling to remove a stuck drawer, I switched it with the bottom drawer and glued the face down there, covering my hands with adhesive in the process.

Moving on to clean up the candle wax, I discovered while I could use the putty knife to cleanly scrape off the wax, the dye in the wax left a lovely dark red-tinged stain on the wall. Now it looks like a murder happened there. Plus, one of the dogs was kind enough to leave a gift on the bathroom rug, which I proceeded to step in.

Yeah. Not really a good day. Although, since I didn't make it to the gym, at least I got my exercise going up and down the stairs ad infinitum. I was out of breath and sweating by the time I went to bed, at which time I realized that, except for smoking my pipe and eating dinner, I had been constantly on the move since I'd gotten home. I was ready to sleep, dammit. So please, universe, I submit. No more. My sanity thanks you.