It was that sort of day

(the time stamp on this posting is probably wrong - I'm actually posting it at 11pm Sunday night)

By 9:30am,

I had burned myself badly removing breakfast from the oven, simultaneously spilling a boiling hot mixture of sugar, melted butter and orange juice all over my stovetop and floor.

The usually-careful Liza had spilled two cups of milk on the (clean) floor in the kitchen and dining room, breaking a mug I bought in college to give to my kid someday.

Jason had managed to catch the edge of the dining room table with his kidney when he was standing up after cleaning up one of the milk spills. I forgot to ask tonight if he's peeing blood ... isn't that what always happens to boxers when they get punched in the kidneys?

The bread that burned me and took 15 minutes and half a roll of paper towels to clean up ... wasn't cooked all the way through. So we put it back in the oven upside down on a baking sheet to try to get the bottom part a little less doughy ... only we forgot to grease the pan, so I had to chip the bread off with a metal knife when it was finally cooked. It wasn't that good, either.

And the knitting project I started this morning got twisted when I worked on it, making the four hundred stitches I had completed irrelevant since I had to completely rip it out and start again.


By 4pm,

I learned that part of one of my favorite national parks had collapsed, and Bernie Mac had died.

By 6pm,

My usually-steady daughter managed to plunge head-first down the stairs to the family room, knocking pictures off the wall and hitting something with her face that has given her an interesting bruise that is precisely rectangular. There's nothing more reassuring after the thumpity-thumpity-bumpity-thud than the primal scream that comes out of the fallen kid's mouth that assures you that no, she's not dead yet.

And she spilled a third cup of milk on the floor of the kitchen. By then, I was out of Swiffer refills.

I found out that Isaac Hayes was dead.

By 11pm,

I found that the knitting project I had restarted this afternoon was about twice as large as it was supposed to be, despite using the needles and yarn weight called for in the directions. I appear to be knitting a gaiter for a polar bear, not my mother. She's going to have to really bulk up for this to fit.


Add to this the 14 crises that were narrowly averted (the sugar syrup narrowly missed landing in the frying bacon grease and spattering all over the front of me; Liza kept trying to play with her magic wands - two foot-long wooden sticks - right next to the bouquet of flowers in the vase K's mom gave us for our wedding; I lost my balance while Liza was hugging me goodnight and almost knocked over the ironing board with the hot iron on top of it, etc.) and you'll understand why I'll be going to bed, pulling the covers over my head, and hoping a sinkhole doesn't open in the backyard and swallow my family sometime in the middle of the night. If you don't hear from me for a few days, you might want to send in spelunkers.