We burn the house to the ground, collect the insurance. Plus, fire? Pretty.

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It's hard to top off your daily work field trip in a week that began with lunch at McCormick & Schmick's, followed by lunches at Cool River, Daily Grill and Thursday fillet mignon at Flemings, but when you walk in on a Friday and the first words out of the boss' lips are, essentially, 'want to blow off work at 2:30, head to Alamo, have a burger and a couple beers and watch "The Hangover"', you've totally scored.

Unfortunately, with previews and a late start, I was scrambling to pick up the girls on time. Hopefully I didn't smell like beer when I got them! I was okay, but had that special beer perma-smile working. Those mid-day beers, followed not by more beer but by water, on top of the fact that I was pretty tired from O's poor sleep the night before sealed my fate and I was out cold with the girls by about 8:30. O generously slept through the night and got up just after 5, so while I'm defiitely in need of coffee, I'm not in need of the all-day caffeine drip I usually am.

Now that Miss O has been at Bean's school for awhile, a lot of the teachers that know Bean well have had a chance to interact with O. Whereas the comments I've always heard on Bean have focused on her being either smart or outgoing, O's comments tend to be primarily "she's so cute!!" and "wow, she's really laid back". The intensity difference between her and Bean is pretty remarkable sometimes, although these same folks aren't treated to the vague 'point and grunt' that I am, nor are they listening to the ten minutes of screaming for some horrible thing (yanno, like me not holding her for every second of the day) that I just walked away from for; to me, she is definitely *not* laid back. She is the most easily upsettable, high-stress kid I've ever dealt with. Drives me insane.

It's funny how perspective makes so much difference. O at school is an entirely different animal from O at home; and I guess, compared to Bean's high intensity, always "on" personality, she probably seems pretty mellow. To me, tho, Bean is the laid-back one and O is the bundle of stress. Just because Bean's always "on" doesn't mean she's not laid back, if that makes sense? She's just so much easier to deal with, in my opionion.

After Thursday's hail fun, it only makes sense that I should have a perfect storm of badness ensue elsewhere. I have one of those Kaboom things in my toilet so I don't have to scrub. It has a couple flexible plastic tubes. I also have an almost-four-year-old who sometimes forgets she doesn't need a *whole roll* of TP to wipe. So when one flushes the toilet and it doesn't drain, then one of the flexible Kaboom hoses comes loose and lodges under the flapper, one is left with a good two inches of water (or more, depending on how quickly they notice it) on their bathroom floor.

I'm just thankful I heard the water before I left for work. There was *nothing* stopping the continual flow and I'm not even bothering to contemplate what 8 hours of overflow would have done, if 5-10 minutes did the 2 inches.

I'm pretty sure this was just a flukey thing, and the stupid Kaboom thing is now in the garbage. Had there been major plumbing badness on top of the potential full-roof replacement, I think I would have just torched the place.

After saving the My Little Ponies, of course.
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