To preserve journalistic integrity I am sharing the following e-mailed description as a counterpoint to my Lazy Sunday post. Beware the Ides of May! Some names have been changed to protect the guilty.
Several weeks ago Monkey woke up in the middle of the night, walked to the middle of her room, pulled down her panties, and peed on the floor. I know because I had heard her wake up and had gone to investigate. Caught her with her pants down, you could say. Why??!! This happened approximately 3 days before her fifth birthday.
A day or two after her birthday I found 2 million colored beads (gift-- I would never provide her with that kind of ammunition) and recent clippings of her baby doll's curls strewn around the room. I instructed her to clean it up -- hah! -- I ended up vacuuming the greater part of it, but left the handful of beads not spilled everywhere in a bag on her dresser. A few hours later returned to find said beads all over her bedroom floor. Why??!
Saturday afternoon a guilty looking Monkey came in to me (I was sick in bed) wrapped up in a beach towel. I asked why she was wet and she confessed she'd been playing in the water. I asked where, and she told me the bathroom. So I let it go. But what actually happened was that both girls had dumped glasses of water on the playroom carpet until it was soaked enough to squish their toes in. Why?! "To cool off." Of course I did not discover the new pond in the playroom until Sunday morning. The soaking apparently brought all past carpet sins to the surface and filled the house with eau de putrescence. We closed off the room and left floor and ceiling fans running day and night. Before John left for a trip on Monday we had agreed the carpeting needed replacing.
On Tuesday while I was researching carpet replacement options (just that room? the stairs and hall, too? what kind/color/blah blah blah) and eventually deciding the budget couldn't take it this summer, Monkey aka Master Disaster decided to give herself a haircut to go along with the fine work she did on her baby doll. (See why someone will NOT be getting an American Girl doll like the one belonging to her older-and-shoulda-known-better partner in crime?)
In an effort to stay the appearance of Crazy Mom, I called in an SOS to our friendly neighborhood Needs family. Rich and his boys cut out a large section of the playroom carpet and the thoroughly soaked pad, hauled it down to the side of the garage, and threw in a flood story of their own for good measure. Hooray for heroes! A few days of fans and some Arm&Hammer spray on the carpet and the smell was gone.
Last week I got three large beach mats on sale at World Market and slid them into the space where the carpeting used to be. I think they'll be a good object lesson until we redo the carpet -- maybe next year!
2 comments:
I'm so glad to know that my children are not the only naughty ones in this world. So sorry to hear about your carpet--what a nightmare!
The PBS "monkey" (aka Curious George) has an episode where he spills and soaks the carpet to see how squishy it feels to his toes. Me thinks your monkeys pulled a "George".
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