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TODAY MARKS THE 3 YEAR 

anniversary for my daughter and her boyfriend.  Three years for them; what feels like a decade for me.  For their anniversary, they decided that they would take a trip to Lake Tahoe for a long weekend getaway. They were just a few months shy of being 21 and unfortunately for them, the hotel they wanted a room at had an age requirement of 21 to be able to rent a room.  So, I decided to take that as an excuse to go to Lake Tahoe to play, and by play I mean gamble (although I made the kids think that I was really going out of my way for them….evil, I know). 

Their check in date had arrived and they were in the car, on their way to Tahoe.  I was still at home cleaning the house, getting ready to drive up myself.  Of course, good ol’ OCD paid me my usual pre-vacation visit and my chores had to be completed prior to me leaving the house (for a whopping 24 hours). Well, as always, they ended up taking me longer than I allowed myself time for and I was starting to run late.  I wrapped up my chores and hopped in the shower.  Not that I have to go into much detail, nor should I really be sharing this (but if you haven’t already noticed, I didn’t come with a filter), but after my shower, I decide I have to go to the bathroom. 

During my visit to the porcelain God, I noticed that my toenails looked horrible and decided there was absolutely no way I was going to wear sandals that day with my feet looking like that.   My OCD and overthinking issues lead to the pre-planning of my outfit and if I changed that at this point in the game, it would fuck up my day completely.

So, as I’m sitting on the toilet, I figured I might as well paint my toenails since I didn’t have a ton of extra time to spare and I was really just kind of doing nothing.  So, painted my toenails became.

As I’m painting my toenails, I noticed that my fingernails are in just as bad of shape, if not worse.  I can’t let one set of nails look good and the other look like complete shit.  So, I decided I’m going to optimize my time and multi-task.  I’m going to finish my toes, paint my fingernails to match, all while sitting on the toilet. That’s genius! I can accomplish 3 tasks at one time and not fall further from my intended departure time.  Shit, I might even make up a few minutes since I’m so smart think of something like this!

Voila!  Fingers and toes straight out of a salon.  Now, I can wear my sandals and know that everything is in order and looking good.  Time to get my ass off the pot and get ready. 

Oh fuck – dilemma!  How am I going to wipe my ass?  My nails are wet now.  My super smart idea, now not feeling too genius.  I know, I’ll just be super careful.  I grab the toilet paper and continue on to the details you’d rather not know. 

Oh Fuck!  Even bigger problem.  My once genius multi-tasking hack has now become a complete nightmare. As I’m doing my deed down south, trying to save some time, my wet nails have sucked the toilet paper to them like a shop vac would do to a gum wrapper.  Now I’m in full blown panic mode.  Not only have I completely ruined my beautiful nails, but I now have also used ass paper glued to my hand.  I can’t get it off because if grab it with my other wet hand, now the problem has multiplied. 

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?  YOU’RE A FUCKING IDIOT!!” I yelled out loud to myself as my butt ass naked self is sitting on the toilet, my right hand behind me, inside the toilet bowl, underneath my ass, toilet paper stuck to my hand like JB Weld. 

I decide to reach for more toilet paper, thinking I would use that to relieve my other hand from it’s dreadful assignment, at least enough to get up and either get back in the shower or walk my ass through a car wash.  Bad idea. Now both hands have toilet paper stuck to them and I’m frozen like a deer in headlights atop my throne. My salon quality nail polish demolished, not only on my hands but now my toes due to my absent minded, fish out of water, acrobatic freak out I just had which stemmed from my almost deadly panic attack.

As these events are taking place, my phone starts ringing.  Without even looking, I already know who it is.  Guaranteed it’s my daughter or her boyfriend and they’re calling to see where I’m at because they’re already in Tahoe.  I’ll let it go to voicemail and will call her back when this shit show (no pun intended) is over.  No big deal.

Then my phone rings again – and again and now my anxiety is skyrocketing because I know my daughter well enough to know that she’s now worried about me.  I ALWAYS answer her call.  On a bad day, she’ll have to call twice, but no more than twice will she call before I answer.  We’re now on call number 4. 

Even when I can pick up the phone, what the fuck am I going to tell her?  Oh sorry…had a little toilet paper/bowl/ass/fingernail polish mishap.  That’s giving her more ammo and proving her case of putting me in a home early worthy of doing so. 

Next idea….I’ll just tell her I lost track of time.  No, then I’m going to deal with them being pissed at me because at this point I should be in Tahoe, not playing go fish in my own toilet bowl.

Here I sit, my blood pressure at record levels when the second worst thing that could happen in this situation happens. 

My doorbell rings.

“Please for the love of God let that front door be locked!” I think to myself.

My doorbell rings MAYBE once every month.  But as things usually go in my life, that one time happened to be right this very second.  What are the fucking odds?

My house is a second home to all of my daughter’s friends.  The same friends that I have previously given permission to not even knock, just come on in, whenever they want. 

Again, the chiming of the doorbell rings throughout my house like the scary intro music on a horror film.  I am now in a complete, full body sweat and rapidly approaching hyperventilation.

At the time, our house, along with 2 other houses, had a gate that you had to drive through before you got to our driveway.  You couldn't go through that gate unless you had the code and the only people who knew the code to get in were the last people on the planet I’d want walking in on this unexplainable situation: my daughter’s friends, my landlord and my neighbors. 

As quick as I’ve been known to be, even I couldn’t explain this one if I had to.  My bathroom door was wide open, I’m as naked as I was the day I was born and now completely frozen as if paralyzed. Thank God my bathroom window was high enough that you couldn't just peer into it because I sure as hell couldn't have gotten up to close it.  I couldn’t even think about moving without the risk of contaminating whatever I came into contact with.

Whoever was ringing the door bell knew that clearly someone was home.  My bathroom window was on the same wall as the front door and only a mere 10 feet away from it.  I had my music blaring a song by Deftones. Usually not something you'd hear coming from an empty house.

So, I held my breath and waited.  Why I felt like holding my breath would make no one being home feel more believable is beyond me…but in my moment of panic, it made sense.  As you could probably guess, the phone rang again. 

Nope, no one is home…Phone ringing, Chino singing; totally normal empty house events.  I’m sure the person at the door was thinking the same thing.

Between that, I'm sure the doorbell ringer just heard me flopping around like a fish out of water not 20 seconds prior.  There’s no doubt in my mind that my mystery guest was buying this load of bullshit and actually believed that no one was home, as they stood listening to the absolute chaos taking place just on the other side of the wall.

I can see the thoughts racing through their mind. “I know you’re home, answer the fucking door!” “I can hear you in there!” “Why are you avoiding me?” “Should I call the cops?” “I’m just going to walk away and not tell anyone I was ever here.” If they only knew what was actually going on and why I couldn’t come to the door.

To this day, I don’t know who was at my door because at that point, I didn’t want to even admit to anyone that all the strong-armed robbery sounds emitting from my house were in fact created by one solo person, leaving questions to be asked and with questions comes expected answers.  Answers that I never want to have to explain or address with anyone for any reason...EVER.

“Thank God!” doorbell stopped; phone stopped. 

FINALLY, I was left alone, in relative silence to think about the choices I had made and how maybe I wasn’t as smart as I had initially thought. 

I did learn something that day.  I learned that maybe I should try to slow down these ADD, OCD, in a hurry to go nowhere thoughts of mine before actually executing my not so genius plans. 

I had approximately 5 more minutes to sit and ponder these things as my nail polish finished drying.  Never in my life has it taken “Insta-dry” nail polish that long to dry.  Ever.

What initially was once a great idea on how to save time turned into a complete waste of it.  In the end, I made it to Tahoe, with a completely unplanned outfit, hair wet and all nails looking like complete shit. 

You can imagine the shock on my daughter’s face when I get there, her thinking I’m late because I’m getting ready, and I look like I just got into a bar fight or decided to stop and play in traffic on my way up. 

Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t clever enough to come up with a good excuse as to why I was late, and well, I always own my "shit" anyway, so I fessed up to my game losing fumble and watched my daughter and her boyfriend gasp for air as they were laughing at me.

Neither one of them were surprised at my little fingernail escapade as this is just kind of how things go for me and they both know that at this point.