A Special Kind of Stupid

I've got a 17 year old daughter who, if left home alone, will honestly forget to eat. She gets so caught up in ... whatever... (a book, Spongebob, watching paint dry...)... that she is completely oblivious to the passing of time, and doesn't even recognize the pangs of hunger in her belly. I've always said it takes a special kind of stupid to forget to eat. And judging by the ever-expanding size of my backside, I must be absolutely brilliant.

However, I have to say... her place as the flower of the family has been overtaken... by me.

Did you ever have one of those days when you knew you should never have bothered to roll out of bed? Well, I do believe I've got one for the record books.

Let me preface this absurd tale with a little disclaimer - this has been absolute hell week, and as a result, I've been dropping IQ points by the hour, as I worried myself sick over my middle daughter who has been in the hospital for the last 8 days, which also explains the extended period without posting on my blog. (Don't worry, she's fine. It's a story for another day.) Oh, there was also the 4 day layover with Tropical Storm Fay, which put our entire world on hold until today. But that's another story too.

Anyway, so I'm more than mildly sleep-deprived, and severely stressed out... thus it is no surprise that when it came time to get ready for work this morning, I wasn't quite prepared. Somehow, I failed to do enough laundry during the storm, and I was down to one pair of work pants - the hated chestnut brown ones, which nothing really matches. When I'm desperate, though, I've been known to pair them with a butter yellow tunic I got from Cato last year, that has a johnny collar and a drawstring waist, and is just so flattering and adorable that I actually bought an identical one in white to wear to graduation in June (except it disappeared immediately thereafter.... I'm suspecting that one of the girls killed it in a load of red laundry, and rather than present me with the offense of its pink remains, just put it out of its misery, in the garbage can outside... but that, of course, is yet another story). Anyway, so I was planning on wearing the brown pants and yellow shirt, right? Except everything I own needs to be ironed (the downside of cramming a family of 4 into a 450 square foot cottage - no storage space!).

So while simultaneously cooking my son's breakfast this morning, I set up the ironing board in front of the stove, and got busy ironing my clothes. The pants are that delightful gabardine, that generally requires only minimal heat to drop the wrinkles, so I did them first, and then threw the shirt on the board, while I was putting the muffins in the oven. As they baked, I got busy with the ironing, making sure to thoroughly saturate my shirt with starch, since I like my clothes really, really crisp. Unfortunately, though, the iron didn't seem to want to evaporate the starch, like it normally does. So I touched the bottom of the iron to make sure it was hot enough (and roasted my fingertip). Confused, I tried ironing longer, pressing harder... nothing. I just couldn't understand it. The more I tried to iron, the tastier those muffins smelled, but the starch spots just wouldn't go away.

Then, as I went to set the iron down in frustration, you can imagine the horror that befell me, as I realized that I'd never managed to get the starch out of the closet - and had sprayed my favorite shirt down with Pam!!! I was so aghast that I dropped the iron, whose high-quality plastic casing shattered into a million pieces on my tile floor. The light was still on though, even though all manner of wiring was visible, so I figured it would probably still serve my purposes, and I chose another shirt - a lightweight cream sweater (which I would normally never wear in Florida in August, but I was desperate to match those darned brown pants!!!) and I placed it on the board to be ironed. Unfortunately, I failed to realize that on the way down, the iron apparently bounced on its tip, and created a jagged edge which, when applied to the fabric, resulted in a horrendous, irreparable snag.

One blouse, one sweater, one iron - 15 minutes. I guess I should be thankful that I didn't starch the blasted muffins!

Yes, my daughter's place as flower of the family has been usurped, by me - the bloomin' idiot.