Yesterday evening was perfectly lovely. We had some of my favorite people over for a mini-Thanksgiving dinner ā my brotherās Caitlin and my fiancĆ© and his family ā just for fun while my brother is still home on leave. We had delicious food: turkey, homemade gravy, mashed potatoes, butternut squash, meat dressing, bread stuffing, cranberry sauce, salad, stuffed celery, apple pie, pecan pie, pumpkin pie and chocolate storm cloud dessert.
Yes, we were all stuffed to the brim by the end of the night. š
It wasnāt until after everyone left that everything went downhill. After-party blues and thoughts of a speedily-approaching Tuesday workday combined with a piece of bad news had me in not the most cheery frame of mind. I finally decided at about ten oāclock that it was time to go to bed and have a good cry. A quick stop by the bathroom to wash up, brush my teeth and get ready for bed should have taken me ten minutes.
Why is it that I didnāt crawl into bed until nearly an hour later?
Wellā¦Iām a klutz, thatās why.
I opened the medicine cabinet door to get out my contact lensesā case and a small bottle of saline eye drops JUMPED out at me, landed in the sink and managed to fall perfectly into the open drain.
Yes.
Down the drain.
I yelped. I facepalmed for a minute and began scrambling for a solution. The bathroom sink is a pedestal sink, which makes taking the pipe apart just a little problematic ā in short, none of us have the faintest clue how to take the darn thing apart to just GET to the pipe.
So how the heck was I going to get that tiny plastic bottle out of that drain?! In a moment of sheer brilliance (or idiocy), I thought of a solution. Misjudging how long the pipe was, I ran out the kitchen and grabbed a kitchen knife. By this time, my mom had a flashlight and was peering down the drain.
āI donāt think the knife is long enough,ā she said.
āYouāre right,ā I said ā and with that, the knife slipped out of my fingers andā¦down the drain.
I kid you not.
So, itās about a quarter past ten oāclock, about the time Iād planned to be in bed having a good cry, and I not only have a small plastic bottle down the bathroom drain, but also a kitchen knife. About five inches down an inch wide pipe and no known way to get to said pipe just to take it apart.
MY LIFE IS MADE OF WIN.
I think it was at this point that I said something about going to bed and never getting out of it again and I hate bathroom sinks and Iām not going to even bother going to work in the morning because at the rate Iām going the computer system will crash as soon as I look at it.
I got desperate at this point and started fishing for the knife with a pair of chopsticks, which, happily, I did NOT drop down the drain as well. Do you know how hard it is to fish a knife out of a bathroom drain with a pair of chopsticks?
Itās now about 10:30 PM and Iām just about beside myself when my 18 year old brother (who invariably gets called to take care of things we womenfolk donāt like to or canāt handle ā such as dead or live mice, hornets and dishes that are out of reach) came to the rescue with a coat hanger.
After about ten minutes of fishing, he pulled up a grimy kitchen knife and after five more minutes of fishing, the small bottle of saline drops.
JON IS MY HERO.
I did a mini-happy dance in my head, washed the knife and threw the dirty bottle of saline drops away, and finally decided that it really was time to get to bed. Whereupon I discovered that I canāt remove the plastic from eyeballs because my bottle of contact lenses solution has gone AWOL.
Really, really AWOL and anyone who would know where it was stashed had already gone to bed. I looked in the medicine cabinet, I looked under the sink, I looked in the pantry, I looked in the shower, I looked in the upstairs bathroom, I looked everywhere my sleep-deprived and angsty brain could think to look.
And no contact lenses solution.
I could almost feel the plastic adhering to my eyeballs forever as I fumed inwardly. Finally, I remembered the travel size bottle Iād stashed in my car for emergencies. I stalked out in the rain and got it out of my car, muttering dire things. I washed my face and removed my contact lenses, muttering dire things. I got into my pjs and brushed my teeth, muttering dire things. I checked the alarm on my cell phone and crawled into bed, muttering dire things.
And just as Iām settled in under my blankets, I remembered:
I forgot to take my allergy meds. And the bottle was downstairs.
And thatās why 11 PM found me standing barefoot in the kitchen, muttering dire things to a bottle of Zyrtek thatās never done me harm.
And furthermore, thatās why Iām drinking REGULAR COFFEE today.
(I donāt think Mondays like me)