Dramatic Deployment Story

Today was one of THOSE days. You know...the ones where so much stuff goes wrong that it almost becomes hilarious. And then that ONE thing just tips the scale and suddenly you don't even have the emotional stamina to cry, all you can do is laugh at your own misfortune.

WELL, that was today. It all started after work when I came home and remembered that the LDS missionaries were supposed to be coming over.

My house was (and still is) a complete and utter HAZMAT zone. I walked in the door after work and was bombarded with the vile smell of cats (I LOATH the smell of animals and 99% of the time our house smells like roses and cookies, but the past week I've sorta "neglected" the litter box). It just so happened that the litter box was so disgusting and full I decided that rather than clean it, I was just going to chuck the whole thing and start over from scratch. Seemed like a good plan at the time...

I jump in my car and race off to the pet store. I get there and they are CLOSED. I had a near meltdown in the parking lot so the lady was nice and let me run in and grab some of the disposable litter pans. I rush back home, set up one of the litter pans for them to use, gather up the other 2 litter boxes and begin hauling them to the dumpster.

I'm about halfway down the exterior stairs carrying the extra-large covered litter box (FILLED to the brim with cat excrement and trash) when suddenly I bumped the railing. The cover of the box flies off, the bottom pan crashes to the ground, tumbling down the stairs leaving a nice trail of cat poop all the way down the stairs and onto our neighbors front porch. *groan* And I'm not talking like there was a turd here and there, I mean the ratio of poo to litter was pretty much 200:1.

I rush to the dumpster, throw the box away, scoop up as much of the solid waste as I can, rush back upstairs, grab a broom, rush back down, and begin sweeping the cat crap underneath the bushes (what the heck else am I suppose to do????)

I get that mess cleaned up, head back out to the car to get the box of fresh litter I had just bought. It's one of those stupid cardboard boxes with the flimsy plastic handles...and I'm a weakling. So I'm hauling this thing down the walkway when suddenly the entire top of the box rips clean off and all the fresh litter pours onto the cement. Then it starts to rain.

So not only is there a pile of cat crap underneath the bushes getting moistened up, there are now 10 pounds of fresh litter becoming soggy and gross on the walkway. I rush back up, get the broom, rush back down, try and try and sweep it back into the box. The end result is there is now soggy cat litter with sweep marks in it,  and I have a broom cemented over with clumping cat litter.

I walk back into my house, on the verge of tears, and get once again bombarded with the smell of cats. So I decide maybe I can mask it with air freshener. Oh wait...I'm OUT of air freshener. So I turn to the next best thing...hair spray. I run around the house hairspraying everything trying to get the smell of herbal essences to permeate through the cat aroma. So now there is cat litter everywhere, trash everywhere, dishes all over the place, AND my apartment smells like a pet salon. Great.

At that point I was pretty fed up. I looked over and noticed my plant had died and my garbage bag had a hole in it. That was the tipping point. I picked up the trash bag and hurled it out the front door (literally...hurled). Next came the plant, flying out the door. It actually rebounded off the railing and back into the house the first time (sending dirt everywhere). But the second time it got some nice air and bounced off the stairs before tumbling down to the story below. I threw the broom off the balcony. Then I looked around for more things to throw, but there was nothing, so I stormed downstairs, picked up my plant, came back upstairs, and threw it out the door a third time, then let out a war cry and started laughing.

And that is the scene that the missionaries came upon....a histerically laughing housewife in pj pants standing over a pile of soggy cat litter repeatedly throwing a shriveled house plant from her second story apartment. They were nice about it...offered to dispose of my trash, newspapers, and dead plants. Then they pretended to overlook the horrid cat smell when they came inside to help me some more, and averted their eyes from the disgusting sink, all the while proclaiming that I "kept a fine home" and "they had seen worse".

They said nothing about the fact that I still have groceries sitting in plastic bags in the living room and I think I'm going to just pretend that maybe everyone does that...just to make myself feel better.