Truths: There is a hole in the ceiling…Dear Liza, Dear Liza…

So, where do I even start? I swear they don’t even make comedy shows this good anymore.

Let’s see… Remember the furnace that didn’t work last week? Well, that actually turned out quite well. All we needed was to replace the batteries and scrub off the battery acid that had decayed in the thermostat. All of which – I am proud to report I did.

The drain in the master bath did not go so well. And, lets be honest – should it? Has it not become standard operation around here for things to go wrong…really wrong?

There have been days when I struggled with what to blog about – apparently those days are over!

Yeah, the drain which my husband has bandaided for the last two years decided that a bandaid would no longer do the trick. God forbid – it was time to call a plumber!

Of course that didn’t go easy either. I got a referral from Carol and made the call. But, that plumber was going out of town for the week – so he had to give me another name… Luckily, he agreed to come out. He could have come out Saturday morning – but that wouldn’t work for me…because I had to scrub the entire bathroom before he could step foot in it.

It would have been terribly embarrassing for anyone to walk in our bathroom. I don’t know if I said it before – but I hate housecleaning – and I really despise cleaning bathrooms.

So, instead of the plumber coming Saturday – I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the entire bathroom floor to ceiling. If it weren’t for the fact that drain is leaking into the kitchen ceiling – I would have to say that the bathroom never looked better.

But, lets slow down.

We also decided that this was the weekend we would put up Christmas decorations. Its one of those things that once it is done – you sigh and look lovingly at how your house was transformed into a Hallmark card. But – somewhere between then and getting out the boxes is more like a living Hell.

By Sunday – with the boxes half unpacked, we watched football all day – drank beer and then took it upon ourselves to start putting up the outside lights – in the dark. Our hands were shaking as we saw our breath in the crisp air – Crisp, I mean more like freezing. Crisp is what they would say in poetry – this was not poetry.

At one point, Bill said, “I hate doing this with every passion I have… I hate it!”

But, I make him do it anyway – because that is what we do at Christmas… String lights 10 stories up and pray no one falls off the ladder.

Needless to say we got about half way through when we shook our heads in disgust and gave up and returned to the couch for some Sunday night football and a bowl of popcorn.

Yesterday morning, I had the pleasure of waking up to a house that looks like Santa puked in. Tissue paper, bows, lights, scattered around the floor. Boxes still stacked high and snowmen laying on the floor as though they drank too much the night before.

It was a disaster. And in a few hours the plumber would be coming. Good thing I cleaned that bathroom.

The plumber, Steve, weaved amongst the boxes in the foyer – to the kitchen where he assessed the situation. He managed to find his way around the snowmen and up to the bathroom (which really was sparkling clean) and knelt down by the shower drain as if to pray that I made all of this up.

Nope, it was broke… He described what was wrong and I shook my head as though I knew what he meant and then all I heard him say was, “I can do it for around $250.”

Sounded good to me.

Within minutes as I covered up the new stove with a towel – Steve was sawing the drywall kitchen ceiling and I was having a panic attack. I had just cleaned the whole kitchen – every cabinet, every drawer and now there would be more drywall dust.

I went back into the living room where I sank down into the sofa and wanted to scream or cry or both.

Surrounded by mountains of red and green, UPS boxes and drunken snowmen – and now a hole in my kitchen ceiling – all just in time for the holiday season!