Tonight I started a fight that I didn't stand a chance of winning. I hate to spoil the ending for you but I lost miserably and I can't wait to cash in on my consolation prize. But before I experiment by pairing chocolate milk with buttery, salty, Parmesan cheesy popcorn I'm going to tell you my story.
Round 1: Somehow I managed to volunteer to host Book Club for the month of March which is crazy because March is a very crazy month with birthdays and special events (can you say, Purim Carnivals and St. Patty's Day?). At any rate, I think I thought that I could just have a clean house for the whole month of March, which is entirely unrealistic I now realize. I started preparing for my clean house month by doing a thorough vacuum and a complete freak-out during my "vacation" last week. Today I was home with a sick Liam and it seemed like a good day to get some more of that cleaning done, considering that now it's March. I noticed that the shower curtain had some stains on it. I have no idea how a shower curtain got stained. I'm just going to go with water damage. At any rate, I put it in the wash. This is completely logical because it's made out of cotton.
Round 2: The shower curtain comes out of the drier looking... a little crumpled. No bother, I'm sure it'll all even out.
Round 3: The shower curtain crumpling is seriously more serious than just being crumpled. It's about 1 foot shorter and 1 foot less wide than it had been when stained, hanging up this morning. I panic and shout for Bill, who giggles and goes back to making his sandwich. I'm not sure if he realized that I was actually in crisis here. Maybe I wasn't in crisis only because of the shower curtain. It might have had more to do with vacation planning going awry and watching a sad movie on TV this afternoon. Either way, this was bad.
Round 4: I iron the shower curtain while talking to Bill who apologized for walking out of the room instead of panicking with me. I accepted fault too for my panicking but as I ironed I could tell this could still be an issue so I kind of panicked again. How are we going to have time to go to Bed Bath and Beyond before Book Club?! And I thought to myself, at least I have that 20% off coupon... Bill suggested that he could go to Target without me. I think I might have actually ignored that suggestion.
Round 5: I hung the shower curtain up on the rings and this was when I realized that everyone else who has a bathroom with running water also has those nice wrought iron (or cheap imitation) shower curtain hooks. Some people even have ones that coordinate with their bathroom theme (think yellow submarines or seashells). Somehow I must have overlooked this trend because my shower still has tacky green plastic rings. Ooops?
Round 6: I managed to inch down the shower tension rod so that the curtain would be a little lower and cover the bathtub better. Between the ironing and the lowering of the rod, it wasn't looking so bad and I was thinking that we could put off Bill's trip to Target.
Round 7: I got selfish. Hmmm... that worked really well. Maybe if I just lower the rod a little bit more, the curtain would hang a lower too... And with that, the rod gave out and fell unceremoniously into the bathtub, carrying my slightly-too-small curtain with it. Bummer. And Bill had already left for the evening.
Round 8: I tried to compromise with the shower curtain rod and I looked at the bright side, this gave me a chance to wipe down the surface of the side of the tub a little better. But the slippery surface just made getting the rod back in place more impossible. This wasn't going well.
Round 9: I talked to Bill on the phone and he suggested moving the rod a little closer to the edge of the tub wall. It worked!
Round 10: I got selfish again and tried to lower it. It fell again, which almost made me cry but I was able to get it back in place. I texted Bill back with "I fixed it!" And he responded with an excerpt from the speech our best man gave at our wedding, "So you've got that going for you, which is nice." Real funny.
Round 11: Later in the evening, after I thought the battle was long since over and won, after I was started to look back on the bright side and move on to assorted other challenges like making dinner, cleaning the bathroom sink, etc... I took Josh in for his bathtime. I leaned over to turn on the faucet and (you know what's going to happen next, right?) the shower rod and curtain and those stupid green plastic shower rings all fell down directly onto my head.
Fully admitting my loss, I texted Bill back, "It just fell on my head" and I found myself starting to cry- just starting to, mind you. Deep breath. There was a bright side to all of this, I quickly realized. First of all, Joshua wasn't the one whose head got smooshed. He had been standing right next to me and managed to escape any injury. Second, now I had a great view of Joshua in his bath while I continued to clean the bathroom counter and mirror. I even got him to try something new- dumping water on his own head! And third, I started devising my plan of how I could reward myself for all of my troubles later in the evening. I know some of you really like to top of a tough night with a glass (or bottle) of wine. Many of my friends like to just go to bed early. But me? My consolation prize is a big bowl of popcorn- buttered, salted and covered in Parmesan cheese. Now, I wonder how it will taste with a glass of chocolate milk?
It would have been OK if the rod had fallen on Joshie...he was wearing his fireman's hat, right?
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