When Life Gives You Gas Leaks, Wear an Extra Diaper

Surprise! I haven't really fallen off the face of the earth, never to blog again. I've just had a few crazy weeks, but nothing has happened that has been worthy enough to write about. Until today. Call it Murphy's Law or Tuesday the 26th bad luck--the stars had a good laugh over our house today. Of course there are worse problems to have...no one was hurt or killed (and there are people starving in China). Just a funny way to ring in the unofficial start of summer:

~A gas leak in our house necessitated our exile for a couple of hours (thank goodness the grandparents live right around the corner!)...no heat (fine by me), cooking (thank God!) or hot water until tomorrow. As for the hot water...not a good look with 3.3 babies in diapers. "They" told us we have just enough hot water for 2 showers. I'm assuming "they" think one shower = 1.2 minutes rather than the customary 14.6 minutes per.

~In all the hulabaloo, Kat, our cat (try not to get confused with the spelling), got locked in a closet for the duration of our evacuation. I do hope kitties are immune to the long-term effects of the equivalent of glue sniffing.

~My laptop caught a swine flu-like virus, my 6-week-old Blackberry died a premature death and our desktop computer is a near-casualty due to a recent storm (ok, all of that didn't happen today, but I'm still feeling the effects).

~A regular sitter due to arrive at my house at 8:00 am tomorrow called at exactly 8:00 pm to tell me she will be off tomorrow. Huh? Whatever happened to asking, not to mention more than 720 minutes' notice?

~Speaking of sitters...someone in my family, who shall remain nameless and who is in great need of help right now due to health issues, let a sitter go (to put it mildly) within 30 minutes of her arrival today by using tactics reminiscent of Sophia Petrillo on The Golden Girls. Anyone who has seen the show will know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, rent it for a good laugh!

~My two cousins are killing me in Scrabble...on Facebook. We have ongoing games and they keep getting double, triple and quintuple-times-eighty word points for words like "if," ti," and "la" (those last two, the symbols for Titanium and Lanthanum, your common, everyday household metals). Tonight my cousin Laura enlightened me about the dictionary function on the side menu of the game. Where was this hot tip 200 points ago?!?

All of this while trying to pack 6 people for vacation next week. Watch out for those gas leaks in the baby pool.