Last evening around 8PM, we finally had hot water. There was tons of laundry, the dishwasher was full of dirty dishes, Alan wanted a shower, I needed a bath and a hair-washing - it was hard to know what to do first. After we had most of that sorted out, we were both exhausted. We'd stressed about the situation all weekend and all day Monday - not so much getting the water heater replaced, in and of itself, but as we have found to our despair, the house is j-u-s-t old enough that calling a professional for any sort of repair leads to more repairs and huge, nasty-surprise bills because things, and then related things, have to be brought up to code. This turned out all right, however, and they stuck to the initial quote even though some things like wiring and a drainage pipe did have to be replaced to meet current code. Still, I was in quite a mental state, our relaxing lake retreat weekend that was supposed to balance out work stress/insanity being replaced by frustration and worry (and not being able to wash hair! or have bubble baths!) AND I had to get up extra-early this morning to be at a faraway meeting.

So, last thing before I retired for the night, I needed to make some repairs to my manicure. It bugs me no end to have a chip or a worn-off spot, and my polish had chipped a wee bit on two nails and needed to be entirely redone on my right thumb. Still, no biggie, 5 minutes max, right? Yeah, until the moment when I picked up my emery boards, my fuchsia polish and some Kleenex, turned to exit the bathroom and promptly dropped the polish bottle, which broke when it hit the tile floor and splattered hot pink polish all over the bathroom floor, my pajama bottoms and my feet. Of course it was a nearly full bottle - I'd only done hands and toes twice out of it - and it was EVERYWHERE. Let me tell you, nail polish smears when you try to wipe it up with TP or paper towels or Clorox wipes. Oh, and did I mention it's a white tile bathroom? Gah! So I had to use an entire bottle of nail polish remover to get it off the tile and off myself. I still don't have quite all of it out from in between my little and next toe on my left foot. By the time I'd cleaned the whole floor with nail polish, my entire manicure was completely ruined and instead of a 5-minute patch job, I had to redo the entire thing (all fingers, 2 coats). AND because it had gotten all over my feet, and I'd had to practically wash my feet in polish remover, my piggy-toes were ruined as well. Technically I could have just worn closed-toe shoes today, but I figured, "What the hell, I need something to do between coats on my hands," so those had to be re-polished as well.

THEN, I kept noticing new smears wherever I'd just cleaned. Alan said he thought the new smears were blood, not polish, and sure enough I'd managed to embed a shard of glass into my left heel and my right palm. I thought I'd NEVER get the one in my hand out. I was so upset - way outside the proportion of the incident, I guess. I know lots of people have very real, much more dire problems, but the hot pink polish all over my lovely white bathroom, at the tail end of a horrible 3-day weekend that was supposed to be so wonderful...it was almost too much for me to bear. I cried and cried in the living room, meaning my manicure took even longer because I couldn't see properly what I was doing.

The moral of this story is: don't cry over spilled polish. It will only muck up your re-manicure.