I did not tell my children it was April Fool’s Day because I didn’t want to be bothered with joke after prank after joke after prank. That’s exactly how it would be as they are both notorious little pranksters. The oldest two that is. It was a bad enough day anyway without all the jokes.
When it rains at our house, it literally pours. Not the wet, watery downpour from the heavens, but the bad luck. I swear. We have moments in our lives where it seems that nothing at all can go wrong, we are blessed beyond measure, and then everything will hit us at once. Take April 1st for instance. My son had broken the window the day before so I was after a window to replace it. After driving around all day, we finally found one. Now in order to put the new one in, I have to take the old one out. Would be great if I had one of those guns like on Star Trek that would just disintegrate whatever you aimed it at. But since technology hasn’t progressed toward things of that nature yet, I had to do it the old fashioned way, with a pry bar and a hammer. It’s an aluminum window, I figure it should only take me an hour tops to get the old window out and the new one in. Well, four hours, a bruised cheekbone, sprained wrist and a couple dozen cuts and scratches in my hands from broken glass, later, I still don’t have it out. Now, my son is hacking and coughing from what I can only assume is the dust I am stirring up while trying to remove the window. So, off to the ER we go to take care of his asthma attack. At least by then, my husband had returned from his Seattle business trip. Let him worry about the window.
The next morning, Good Friday, I’m washing dishes while my son takes a shower. I wander into my bedroom to check my email and start squishing in wet stuff through the floorboards. Peeking through the bathroom door, I find at least 3 inches of water all over the floor. Seems the front bathroom has clogged pipes and now they are backing up into my bathroom…closet…bedroom. My asthmatic son runs to find every towel we have dirty or clean, while the other empties the vacuum I had tripped over earlier while trying to fix the window. It happens to be a large wet/dry vac, but needs to be empty to work as a wet vac. Perfect for situations like this…or so I think.
I am feverishly trying to suck up the water with this vacuum on one end while the vacuum is feverishly spitting out the water on the other end all over the floor. After the vacuum is full, I stand up only to realize the two puddles I’ve created are now meeting in the middle. And me with no more towels. I’ve never wanted to bulldoze a house more in my life. After paying the plumbers a good chunck of my paycheck, I’m still thinking about it.