no more vacations for the merrymans

well...lest anyone think that our lives are wine and roses, here's what happened to our family on memorial day.

jon took our son to pick up his sister in brentwood, and then to a movie. my idea of a great vacation is neurotically organizing everything in sight, so i stayed home. i murphy-oiled my front porch rockers, stacked my tupperware by size and color, alphabetized my teas, and filed all the adoption papers i had been leaving out "in case we should need them." (like some moldovan judge was going to call and ask questions or something).

i had volunteered our home and our son's oil paints to anastasia's family for the afternoon. she's trying to get into an art school for college, and one of her portfolio requirements is an oil painting, and her family doesn't have the goods on hand. so, it only made sense, since dennis is so well-outfitted in the paint department, that we should let them bond over blank canvases and turpentine.

so everyone invaded my space around 3:30 p.m. jon and i settled in to watch a movie and left the kids upstairs to paint. when jon went upstairs around 5 to check progress, he noticed a large green splotch on my spotless linen lampshade. he came downstairs and told me about said spot, and said, "you probably shouldn't go up there." and so i went upstairs. well, friends, it appeared that jackson pollock had made a stop at our house. there was blue paint on my custom sofa, black paint on the Berber, and green paint on the walls. i have never been so furious.

well, my brilliant husband herded the kids to the car and made dennis grab his wallet. one trip to pottery barn later, and we had a brand new lampshade, sponsored by my son. he was a little appalled at the price, though not nearly as appalled as i was by the mayhem that had ensued and the fact that his sister did not have a painting to show for all of that trouble.

while my boys were in cool springs, i began noticing that a spot i had earlier thought was where one of my precious, well-house-trained puppies had pottied had grown to a 2' x 6' puddle on my bedroom carpet. knowing there was no way that the dogs had drunk three gallons of water during the day, we had to call state farm - especially when we noticed that the hardwoods were buckling.

so...at 10:30 last night, the nice plumber came and tightened a valve. at 11:30 last night, the water extracters came and set up giant spaceship looking devices to suck all the water out of the house. around 1 a.m., jon and i settled in to the soothing sounds of an airplane taking off. these sounds will continue for 5 days, when the floors "should" be dry and the nice floor repairmen will come and rip out my hardwoods to replace them with new ones.

i couldn't really sit dennis down and have a chat about the oil paint disaster in the middle of that. what i can't figure out is how God knew that a flood would be one of the few things that would take my mind off my anger!