WHAT A F*ing DAY I HAVE HAD!

Just crazy busy and loads of things thrown at me unexpectadly.

Like, my girls wanting me to PLAY big time after dinner. It was great, but the wanted to play "office" in my newly cleaned up office, now - trashed with pillows books, and boxes. They each needed a "desk" and fake computer etc. then....the oldest looks out the door to the laundry room and just says "flood!"

Yes. The rain water (from tropical depression Barney, or Barry or whatever) had instantly saturated the ground and was coming in around the spaces were pipes enter the house and through the frame of the basement window. We enter crisis mode. The girls help, we pull out soggy boxes of fabric (YUCK), big boxes filled with art that immediatly had to get unpacked. Where? in my office. Then every towel in the house goes flying down the stairs into the middle of the growing pond, basically because the mop broke after one swipe across the floor. I McGyver the pipe gaps with plastic bags and gaff tape, The eleven year old drags things into the garage, successfully moving dirt, cat litter and soggy cardboard trough the center of the room/pond, but she was proud to be contributing. The littlest daughter sat on the steps watching and fretting about the kitties. Oh, hey, did I mention taking four cats to the vet at the same time? Yes, that was my afternoon... and did I mention surprises? Well Frankie and Vinny should be Francie and Violet. This is funny; until you realize that females are twice the cost to fix AND this now means there are 6 females and one "altered" male in this house - yikes!

Now the really good part, the girls and I are finally satisfied that the water has stopped pouring in through the walls. They head to bed (real angels during the crisis) and I sit down in the middle of piles and piles of all the stuff you might find stored under the basement stairs. We all know those boxes, you pack them, yu growl at the spouse who said "Oh keep that" and you pretend that you'll never have to see the box again? Well, now I'm sitting in and amongst all the musty dusty detritus that has been part of the last 15 years of marriage - timing is everything. Despite this environment, my plan is to respond to e-mail and maybe look at the three heavy duty projects that I said I would do tonight. Hello? No internet. I have neglected to complain about the 5.5 hours I have spent on the phone with Verizon and Linksys this week. Now we're in for it all over again. I decide "well the basement has been ripped apart - completely, perhaps this wuld be a good time to re-locate the router and modem (out of the range of the kittens who think that all the cords make great toys). I bite the bullet, but only after pouring myself a glass of wine, relocate everything, put on my new headset phone anicipating a few hours of chatting with my firends in Dubai, when I look at the computer and my little duckie is dancing. That means I'm connected to my email. That means I have the wine, I plugged everything in, and it had healed itself. Lovely. the question is, do I DO the union evaluation, the review of the juvenile novel, or the marketing piece for a new work? Me thinks I claim flood, and put it all off until tomorrow!