Horror in Harbor City

Stacy went off to a tea party with some of her lady friends this afternoon and I was put in charge of keeping the roof on the building. Luckily it was nap time for most of my tour of duty, but toward the end L was up and about and demanding attention. She had a new bathtub toy and asked if she could play with it in the tub. Thinking that was a reasonably good way of keeping her confined, I agreed on the condition that she not turn on the water; she went off, happily playing, while I continued to go through bills and junk mail in my office. A little while later N woke up and toddled off into the bathroom to play with L. I could hear the two chit-chatting away, playing together nicely. Two kids suitably occupied for the price of one! Woo-hoo!

I clearly should have known better.

About 45 minutes later L came over to me and said, "Daddy, look what N's doing." I jumped up and bolted to the bathroom and, on flinging open the door, reeled in horror as I realized that I'd been transported into an Alfred Hitchcock movie.



From floor to ceiling... OK, from floor to half-way to the ceiling... were the sanguine signs of a horrific trauma. The cabinets, the walls, the toilet, the shower curtain - all caked with what could only be Mommy's lipstick or the dried blood of a thousand screaming victims. The bath towels were pasty; the floor was slick; N's Tonka toy dump truck (which was also in the bathroom, as it often is, for reasons I long ago stopped trying to uncover) looked like it had witnessed an industrial accident of appalling proportions. Charles Manson was a neater house guest.

Then my disbelieving gaze fell upon the only two apparent survivors of this ghastly holocaust. L slid a little further behind N and muttered that she'd told him not to do it. She then realized that her ruby hands were showing and quickly pulled them behind her back.

As I gathered my breath and let the room stop spinning, the "EEEEK! EEEEK! EEEEK!" of the shrieking violins gradually faded into the background. I thought I'd better count to ten, but by 4.5 I realized I was already calling down fire and brimstone at the top of my lungs. But by 8.4, however, the ludicrousness of the situation finally settled in and I was forced to struggle valiantly to keep my angry-face on and maintain that hint of murder in my voice. But to no avail; I ended up breaking down into pathetically suppressed laughter that immediately handed the battle to the kids on a silver platter. Having lost all authoritarian terror in their eyes, they immediately began to further smear the walls. I regrouped, yelled a little more for good measure, scrubbed their hands to the exact same shade of red, and packed them off to their room for a time out.

I stood back to assess the damage and smiled again. Kids, I chuckled. It was at that moment that a different mental image floated in front of my brain: a vision of Stacy pulling up in the driveway and discovering the fruits of her baby-sitting trust in me. I screamed like Janet Leigh.

The next 45 minutes were spent in frantic scrubbing with rags, hot water, and every caustic chemical we owned. All I can say is, thank goodness for Simple Green^®.