I knew it was going to be a busy day today before I even woke up, and I was dreading having to get up early.  I am very lucky (thanks to my wonderful husband) that I don’t have to get up early every day; I’m not a morning person.  But today there was an early morning dentist appointment and someone also had to be here for the plumbers (more on that later).  So I had begrudgingly set my alarm, but someone nearby decided to mow their lawn early this morning, there were dogs barking (turned out to be ours, of course, doh!), and a weird smell in the house (like someone had just gotten a perm, yuck).  So I got out of bed a half hour before my alarm even got a chance to  make a peep.  And when I went downstairs, I found this where our downstairs (and most popular) bathroom used to be:

Well, ok, so it wasn’t a complete shock.  We had scheduled the plumbers to come today to fix our bathroom floor bulge, but I wasn’t expecting the bathroom to be missing!  And obviously the plumbers’ estimate of the work is going to be way low (and the estimate was frightening enough in the first place!) since much more of the floor was affected than they originally thought even before they tore it to pieces.  Tomorrow we find out if the plumbing itself is “worse than they thought” as well, which would add yet another day to this project and who knows how much money, yikes!  Plus we still have to get a new bathroom floor; to be installed by a different contractor all together –  how much is that going to cost?  Did I mention I’ve had a headache all day?  The plumbers’  drill isn’t helping; it seems like they’re drilling my head open…  All this after we put a bunch of money into house stuff earlier this year when my husband sold his software which we considered a blessing at the time (more on that later).  We got rid of our humongous, room-sized furnace and put central air in the house, and then ironically it was the coolest summer on record and we barely needed the new air conditioning system.  We have the strangest luck  sometimes.  I  wouldn’t go so  far as to call it bad luck; after all, the irony is born from good things we’re receiving, so how can that be bad?  I do get a new bathroom floor out of this, at some point anyway – we might have to try the primitive classic wooden look for awhile…  And while I’m venting about the frustrations of today, let me just go off for a bit about how darn inconvenient it is to get things done while sharing a house with a few (extremely talkative) plumbers who are tearing apart the bathroom!  Not only do I have to keep the kids away from there, but I have to bring the whole gang (of kids – not the plumbers of course!) with me upstairs every time I need something from the bathroom!

And back to the stress of my husband’s work right now…  Back in the spring when his business deal went through, we were ecstatic that we would be able to pay some bills, fix some things on the house, and most importantly, spend the summer as a family without having to worry about work as much.  It was a great summer, but now we have come to find out that a major company wants the software that was sold and is willing to pay much much more than for what it was sold just months ago.  In short, if we had waited to sell the business for just a few months, we would be…  let’s just say ‘in a very good financial place’ right now.  I’m learning a bit about the lessons of patience and greed (ain’t human nature grand?  Just months ago we were perfectly happy with the business deal the way it was, and now I think about regretting selling because it’s worth so much more money), but it’s frustrating; especially on a day in front of little sleep and after the destruction of my beautiful bathroom.  Does this make sense?  I feel like I’m rambling a little bit…  I stopped in the coffee house drive-thru on the way back from the dentist appointment, and it’s been a while since I’ve had a White Lightning, so I kind of feel  like I’m all over the place…

But anyway, I should get the kids out of here and away from the busy plumbers (imagine that, a gaping hole in the bathroom floor attracts kids like flies to… well, I won’t go there.  At least the drive this morning to the dentist through the NW Ohio countryside at the beginning of the beautiful fall season relaxed me a little.  If only there was time for a nap before I go and try to lead a group of 13-year-old spastic seventh-graders…

I’m taking yet another diversion from writing about my great weekend to write about a bad day I had today – I need to vent.  And yes, it involves Walmart – when don’t my bad days involve Walmart?!?  First, my husband’s business clients blew him off, yet again.  We were on the verge of a big business deal, but now the clients are stalling and  becoming difficult to get ahold of – not a good sign.  So I took the kids to Walmart to get them out of the house so my husband could have some peace when he called the clients – not that it mattered; they “weren’t home”.  Sigh.  So anyway, at Walmart, I discovered that they finally did it – raised the prices on diapers.  I knew it was just a matter of time; the diapers have been the same price since my almost 5-year-old was a baby.  So after absorbing the reality of the price increase on diapers (I have two kids in diapers!  Time to rush the potty training, I guess.), I go to check out, and I’m next in line, ready to put my stuff on the counter, and an employee says “I can help you on lane 6”.  So I went over to lane 6, but it turns out, the employee was wrong.  They wanted her to take over on lane 5 instead of open lane 6.  So I went back to lane 5, right where I had started, and now someone has gotten in the line with a SUPER-full cart in front of me.  Of course.  And I had hungry kids who now had to wait in a line with all that candy at eye level.  Have I mentioned that I hate Walmart?

Then I  get home and starting making dinner, and I have a crying baby underfoot – I don’t know why he always cries at home.  He’s the happiest little guy everywhere else, but when we’re at home, he only wants to be held, and I can’t hold him while I’m cooking, doing laundry, cleaning or blogging, so…  he cries a lot.  I  guess I can get rid of most of the toys that are starting to take over my living room since no one plays with them!  And all day I’ve been looking forward to a nice hot relaxing shower, so after dinner, I went to do just that.  But apparently running the dishwasher, giving the kids a bath and hand-washing a dinner pot drained the (new!) hot water heater, and my shower was lukewarm with a cold rinse at the end.  Of course it was.  I can only hope that my day turns around when the Cubs begin their season-opening game tonight – I’ve been looking forward to this for months,  so hopefully my bad day wasn’t a precursor to the tone of tonight’s game.  To quote Tom Hanks from A League of Their Own: “May our feet be swift, may our bats be mighty, may our balls be plentiful…”  GO CUBS!

Earlier this morning, we ruined our chances of sleeping in (since our oldest daughter is on spring break) by signing up to bring a pet to my second-oldest daughter’s school – we forgot about spring break when we signed up for pet day for first thing in the morning, oops – so adding to everything is the fact that I’m tired today also.  We let our little ones play at my daughter’s preschool; they had a blast, and we had fun watching them.  My husband read a book to the kids, and we brought the rats for pet day – and it was SO fun to see certain teachers pale and shriek with fright – hehe!

So I guess the day wasn’t all bad; it was just Walmart getting under my skin, AGAIN.  Oh, and get this – I saw the store manager (I’ll call him Mr. Palindrome, since his last name reads the same backward and forward) park in one of the handicapped spots right in front of the store.  To be fair, he does have a handicapped tag, but I know from my sources that the handicapped tag is not for him but rather his elderly mother whom he cares for.  But I still think he should only be able to park in the handicapped spots when she is with him, and I definitely don’t think he should take those spots away from his customers when he is perfectly able-bodied.  Well, just my opinion, the guy irritates me because of all his dirty price games he plays at the Walmart and the small businesses the store pushes out of the way.  Not that it’s a small business, but Kmart is the latest victim of Walmart in our town – it’s closing for good in May.  What a shame – and to think the Kmart in our town was opened as the test store to see if Kmart would work in small town America.  The test was successful, but that was decades ago, and times have changed – just like Walmart’s prices!

***UPDATE*** – The Cubs are on, and they’re winning – YAY!  Soriano opened the game with a home run on the first pitch of the game! How cool is that?  But, for some reason, the game is not on ESPN 2 like tvguide.com said.  My husband bought me mlb.com, but that seems to be broken at the moment – they’re showing video during the commercials and nothing during game play.  Not only that, my husband’s clients have called (but I guess that’s a good thing), leaving me with the two little ones at their crabbiest time of day.  So I have 2 screamers and no Cubs game.  At least they are winning (I think).  When I put the little ones to bed here pretty soon, I’m tempted to join them just so I can start over tomorrow – every attempt I make at relaxing tonight has just made things worse!