I can't discuss our fourth anniversary without mentioning the fact that my parents' house needed professional cleaning from our stay that lasted roughly one day.
Before we left the girls with my parents, we poured ourselves glasses of wine. Ryan set his on the tea table near the couch where Mairin lay. I took off my jacket to change her, and in pulling off my right sleeve, knocked the glass.
It tipped over and spilled on the carpet. I grabbed paper towel to dab, dab, dab and figured the glass must have been nearly empty, as there was far less damage than I feared.
There was one ugly spot several spatter marks, so I headed to the basement to retrieve the Oxy Clean.
SIDEBAR: You should know that I spill a beverage (usually red wine) EVERY SINGLE TIME I visit my parents. It's ridiculous and I feel awful, but it happens and I have no clue why. I spill quite frequently at home too, but I destroy my parents' house more than any other place. And so, this incident did not alarm me in the least.
I was alarmed when I saw the trail of wine dribbles through the kitchen, leading past the powder room, to and up the stairs. What the Fuss?
I yelled up to my dad, "Dad, is your wine glass cracked?"
"No. What the hell are you talking about?"
"Nothing. Never mind."
There were little red drips everywhere and NO FOOTPRINTS. I cleaned up quickly and surprisingly (probably because it was cloudy at that very moment) no one seemed to notice.
We finished our wine, grabbed our bags and kissed our girls goodbye ... Leighton, Mairin and Luella. I bent down to kiss Lue and my lips met a stiff and matted little dog. What?
Why was my teensy pup trembling and why was she rocking bangs like a Milwaukee-bred seventh-grader circa 1989?
Ryan was laughing and wheezing so hard he could hardly get the words out, and it dawned on me (almost as quickly) that our beloved little four-pound Yorkie was the recipient of the contents of that tumbled wine glass.
She stood behind me (as per usual) like a little shadow, when I spilled. And, on a not-so-humorous note, she tracked no less than a billion droplets of vino all about the house.
My mom was rightfully peeved. Fortunately, she had already consumed her glass of wine, which kept her commentary about how "Lue pees all over the house so what's a little wine added to the mix" to a minimum while we skated out the door.
Once we left, Grandpa entertained Leighton while Grandma spent nine, desperate hours trying to feed Mairin. Toys, bottles, burp cloths, blankets and spitup clothes were surely strewn about until the morning.
The evidence was all but gone when we arrived in the AM. We sat about, marveling at the previous night's events, enjoying coffee and breakfast. Mairin gorged herself on boobie dish to make up for her hunger strike, and we crafted details surrounding Luella's wine-soaked misfortune.
We giggled and snort-laughed and as I put Marinka Dinka over my shoulder for a burp, she launched the entire meal on and over my shoulder into every nook and cranny of the wingback chair, my top, pants and bra. We all sprung into action - handing off baby, pulling out cushions, scrambling for spitty rags, tearing off clothing. It was horrifically silly.
To top it off, I stepped in a puddle of Lue pee on my way to toss my spitty soaked clothes in the laundry while wearing only my underpants and Ryan's overcoat.
Mayhem is the only way to describe it. Me screaming, Ryan laughing, my mom mad at Ryan for laughing, my dad scolding my mom for being mad at Ryan for laughing because "this is what happens when you have dogs and kids" and Leighton seizing the opportunity to stand in the corner and poop her pants without consequence because "pooping on the potty makes me fer-us-ter-a-terd."
Or should I say fer-us-ter-a-turd?
We will let the dust settle before dropping the girls at my parents' house again for a night out. And, someday we will look back on this and laugh. And, oh yeah, today is that day.
Sorry mom.
I can relate to this story on so many levels.
L, AC
Posted by: Auntie C | Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 09:26 AM