Life Immitating Art

Okay, it's just not funny anymore.

On Monday, when I recalled our Christmas festivities with sarcasm regarding our disaster-prone lives, I mentioned the brief bout of stomach flu that plagued my boys and asked for all of you to envelope us with good thoughts as we approached the New Year.

Was that what did it?  Should I have knocked on wood?  Where did I put the garlic?

As a celebratory dinner for New Year's Day, we purchased crab and lobster (my favorites, and special treats that I normally don't get to have) and cooked them up with garlic butter sauce.  We sat at the table, invested a good 20 minutes in compiling a suitable amount of meat from the shells, and got ready to dig in.

"Oh, this is absolutely perfect," I offered.

That must have been it.  That was the cue for the curse.

Joel cocked his head and shushed us as he listened intently. 

"Do you hear running water?"

He did hear running water, of course.  What none of us had heard was Graham flushing the potty earlier and emerging from the bathroom to inform us that his "pee didn't go down", but instead overflowed the toilet, ran all through the bathroom, out into the hall and into the ventilation system for the house where we could hear water splashing and dripping through all of the vents.

We all left our delicious seafood feast and sprang into action, the men soaking up water with towels and a shop vac while I surveyed the damage downstairs.   I was expecting a drip or two, but what we found was that the water seeped through the floor and was pouring out of the smoke detectors, light fixtures and junctures between sheets of drywall, and was only alleviated when we succumbed to the flood and drilled holes in the ceiling for the water to drain into buckets throughout the basement. 

Within an hour, we had most of the damage under control and fans in place to dry up the remaining water, so we returned to our seats and finished our dinner, our mood a little quieter, a little less enthusiastic. 

I knew logically that the flood was caused by Graham's bathroom antics, but the irony of the holiday catastrophe wasn't lost on me.  It was then that I had a thought-- maybe we're not simply doomed to experience holiday calamities, but perhaps these fiascoes are a result of my constant mention of the topic on this blog. 

Maybe, just maybe, the blog is the answer.

So, with yet another holiday incident in our past, I look forward to Valentine's Day with new enthusiasm.  But just in case, I'd like to mention that I'm really, really terrified of winning the lottery and/or losing 20 pounds by Valentine's Day. 

That'd be just awful.