Jell-O and Drano: It's That Kind of Day

The weather outside for March is astonishing. It is 80 degrees today! The trees are budding early, bluebirds are taking up residence in my yard, the peepers are screaming their lungs out in the evenings, and the kids and I have done school at the deck table for three days straight. In bare feet. Beautiful.

But this morning we kept smelling something strange around the house. It smelled kind of like a cat had had an "accident" but not really. Every once in a while we'd just get a whiff of it and so all three of us were walking around in this confused state sniffing like dogs, trying to zero in on the smell. Couldn't find it. Then I was standing right in the middle of the smell (GEE WHIZ...WHAT IS THAT?!) I looked down on the floor and there was this weird little worm (which I now realize was a small black millipede). Matty got closer to it and nearly gagged. It was the "worm" that was making all that smell, so we removed him to the out of doors. YUCK!

So the day was going normally along after that and I made lunch for the kids, cleaned it up and ran some things down the garbage disposal. Nothing major, but the sink clogged up badly. I tried to run it one more time, just to see if it might help and the full side of the sink exploded  upwards like a fountain of puke, all over the counters and floor. It looked just as I have described...YUCK!

This all happened just after I had discussed the idea of inviting some of their friends over to play for a couple hours, so I called the mom and invited, telling her that I'd be there shortly, but I needed to run to the store very quickly for some Jell-O for tomorrow's science experiment, and some Drain-O to fix this blasted sink problem, at least so I could prepare dinner (which has to be done early tonight, as I have to go out at 6:00 p.m.) I left my boy at home to finish his reading, thinking I'd be gone a total of about 15 minutes. I got to the store having forgotten my cell phone, and as soon as we arrived my dear daughter informed me that she has to go to the potty. Now. (sigh) Okay, back we go (at least it was clean) and she says, "Uh, oh...this is going to be a while." She was right--it did take a while. We were m.i.a. in Bloom with no way to let my boy know that we were going to be longer than expected. Finally we emerged from the rest room, grabbed the Drano, then went to the checkout to pay. I reached in my purse only to discover that I had left my wallet at home. AARRGGHH! I left, the only mission having been accomplished was taking my daughter to the bathroom.

We left the store and went to pick up the playmates, and my poor son had called wondering if I had made it there or not. My sink is still clogged and I don't know what I'm making for dinner. I'm thinking Subway...