Vacation....

"vacation all I ever wanted... vacation so happy to get away... vacation makes me feel special ohhhhhhhhhhh..." Did you know that I heard an oldies station playing 80's music? What in the world? It pains me to think that 80's tunes are what 1960's tunes were to me in the 80's. Sigh...

I digress.

Vacation. We're on it. (yes, I am advertising that fact...but all ten people reading this will be thrilled to know I have a wonderful alarm system and wonderfully attentive neighbors-- that and the Brinks Home Security guy housesitting for me. Yeah, that should be good. ;-)

Back to the vacation part. Or, the getting ready for it part which was pretty darn funny. In retrospect, that is. I was determined to leave a clean house. I'm not talking about just a house that was "straightened up'" I mean SPOTLESS y'all. I cleaned my hiney-hoo off all day Friday, packed all of our bags and gathered all the accessories needed for a weeklong beach trip. Once all the suitcases, baskets, cooler, etc. were assembled, we looked like a European family traveling to the states for four months. It was ridiculous.

So, our assemblage of goods is ready for loading in the dining room and I doing one last check upstairs. It's 4:00pm. Hubby is on his way home. The house is clean and I am ready to go. The love and light of my existence (my five year old child) is "helping Mommy" by carrying my cleaning supplies caddy down the stairs. All of a sudden, I hear "uh oh" and then hurried footsteps. Figuring if it was a disaster, he would notify me, I retreat into my bedroom to turn off all the lights. I then glanced over the bannister and gasped in disbelief.

My well-meaning child had dropped an open cannister of Comet (you know, bright green cleaning powder) and it had kerplunked its way down the staircase spewing forth it's contents like a barrel of gunpowder exploding. You gotta understand. Our houseplan is VERY open and there are lots 'o stairs. There was Comet EVERYwhere-- the walls, the stairs, the floor, the dining room, the entrance to the living room. And, to make matters worse, um... I mean more "challenging," the enterprising young lad had soaked towels in water (not ringing them out) and was carrying them back and forth to the stairs (which are wood) to clean it up--creating a green mush-like river across the main floor of the house.

I reacted calmy because it was an accident of course and he was doing his darndest to clean it up. It took an hour and a half to clean up the mess and to de-Comet the stairs. We then mopped them with wood oil soap to get the haze off ( a sort of light greenish haze which was kinda pretty but didn't really match the decor... :-) ).

6:00pm--left driveway EXHAUSTED.

1:30am-- drove into the driveway of the beach house.

Vacation has begun.