Having one of "those days"?

Yesterday was a day full of mishaps and bad luck. I just have to vent! It was my first day back from summer vacation, so I was already dragging my feet back to work. I had just gotten started on my pile of catch-up work when I discovered that our brand new Big Bertha high tech color copier/scanner/fax machine was down...again. And I had a LOT of color printing to do. Sigh...so I resigned myself to working on computer related things. I figured I'd update my blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, answer e-mails, follow up with clients, etc. Wrong! The office LAN system suddenly lost its server connection due to a citywide Time Warner blackout. OMG!

Trying to remain cool and collected, I decided this would be a good time to run some much needed errands, like grocery shopping. After spending twice what I'd intended to spend at the WalMart, I rushed home to put all the groceries away, grab a quick bite for lunch, then rush back to the office. Well...imagine my surprise when I opened my electric garage door opener to reveal my elderly QueenMom with the hugh residential garbage can turned upside down, digging through all the trash. Oh my Lord! She was looking for the tiny piece of Kleenex in which she had wadded up her gold tooth crowns and lost them in a recent cleaning frenzy. Of course, she did not find them in the garbage. But upon seeing me home midday, she was so excited she decided to "help" me. As I struggled to bring in all the grocery bags, unload them on the counters and the floor, then put them away, she parked her chair right in the middle of the open refrigerator. Under the pretense of looking for something to fix us for lunch (she calls it "dinner"), she began cleaning out the contents of the refrigerator and piling up rotten food on the floor...for me to dispose of. So now I can't get to the fridge to put food away OR prepare a quick bite for lunch until I clean up the mess in the floor. As I picked it up and put it in the sink, one of the old Tupperware lids popped off a bowl of rotting beans and spilled everywhere. I had beans and slimy juice in my shoes, on my pants, on the cabinets, and all over the floor. Meanwhile, my frozen foods were thawing! She sat laughing while I bit my lip hard and cleaned everything up.

At last I returned to the office where the equipment gremlins had departed, and I finished out the day in peace. The evening was fairly uneventful until midnight, when I started off to bed. I put Princess Maggie (my Cocker Spaniel) out to pottie one last time before bedtime. She started barking frantically, running from one side of the huge yard to the other, refusing to come back in the house. Then it happened. There was this sudden silence, followed by Maggie rolling and clawing at her teeth. Then the smell wafted through the walls into the house. She had been sprayed by a skunk or squirrel, or something horribly musky. I tried to leave her outside for the night, but she insisted on barking and chasing "it" under the dog house. There would be no sleep unless I brought her inside to silence her. The smell was pungent and lingering. She rolled in every room, on every floor and every piece of furniture, trying to remove it. No doubt it tasted terrible and maybe even stung a bit. Her mouth and snout is yellow. The groomer washed her twice today, even used a "special potion" to neutralize it. She had to scrub her teeth several times to get the thick, yellow spray off. She says the aroma may come back in a couple of days when the perfume wears off. Meanwhile, my car, my garage, my entire house, my bed, and my back porch are infused with the odor.
The moral of this story, if any, is "Never say it can't get worse!"

What would you do for $8,000?

You won't believe the results of this street survey.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dsa0GqGDDrA