The Anatomy of A Breakdown

Have you ever seen the movie Ponyo? The girlies are completely obsessed with it...love it...watch it non-stop. I, on the other hand, am completely irked by it. Specifically, I'm completely irked by Sosuke's mom in the movie, Lisa. She's a complete basket-case, careening down seaside cliffs in her car in the pouring rain, leaving her five-year old son to fend for himself in their house during a tsunami and, upon learning that her husband will miss dinner because he has to work an extra shift on his fishing boat, throwing herself on the floor face-down in a heap of sobs...but not without popping open a can of beer first. (By the way, this is an animated movie, in case you're wondering.)

Come on Lisa...pull yourself together for God's sake!

Every time the girls watch the movie (did I mention they watch it a. lot.) I throw in my two-cents on how lame Lisa is...I just can't help myself.

So it was perhaps the lowest moment of my mothering existence when, after finding me face-down on Audrey's floor sobbing last night, Millie declared, "hey, you're just like Sosuke's mom."

No, if I were Sosuke's mom, I'd be drinking a beer too, thus feeling a lot better than I feel right now.

Why was I sobbing, you might be wondering? Well I'll tell ya (finally...sorry about the long intro). On Monday, just as we were finally settled in, unpacked and organized post-vacation, the plumbing leading to our toilet sort of well...exploded, spewing water everywhere, for a long, long time. Bryan came home from lunch to find our master bedroom, the hall and various other spots in the back of the house (+ part of the living room) under a couple of inches of water.

Good times.

So now we're in the thick of it, weaving our way through a maze of giant de-humidifiers and industrial fans (needless to say, it's loud), watching baseboards get pried off, wood flooring get ripped up, and gumball-sized holes unceremoniously drilled into the walls. Our stuff is turned upside down, the furniture is all caddywhompus...it's quite a sight really. In the meantime, we've decamped to the front of the house, occupying the guest room and an air mattress in the den. This novel arrangement would be sort of fun if it weren't for all the chaos happening around us. (In fact, I would highly recommend camping out in your guest room or living room a few times a year. It's like going on vacation without leaving home, but I digress.)

I held it together pretty well in the beginning, but late yesterday afternoon a trio of happenings lead to my Lisa-esque breakdown: my OCD firmly kicked in, making the mess my house had become completely freak me out, I stubbed my toe hard on a de-humidifier, and then I bumped into my dresser (which was wedged in front of the laundry room door) and knocked off and broke one of my favorite little vases that was perched on top of it. And then I promptly lost it. It was ugly.

image via my lovely friend Stephanie's fantastic blog, let it be.

Thankfully, the sobbing combined with Millie's damning assessment of the situation seemed to prove cathartic, as I woke up today feeling pretty optimistic. Rest assured, I am still supremely bummed about the whole enterprise. My house (that I so lovingly scrubbed and organized and primped and prepped for that home tour a couple of weeks ago) is a complete shambles, oh and did I mention I'm throwing a party for 30 people on Saturday!? But, somehow, things seem a bit less dire.

And on the upside, the whole experience, has me (yet again) re-evaluating my relationship with all the stuff in my house, if not fueling my über-minimalism fantasies -- I'm pretty close to chucking it all and moving into a teeny, tiny abode somewhere... just me, Bryan, the girlies and our ten favorite possessions.

Sounds nice, doesn't it?