I like to call this episode:  The Back and the Bottle

For those of you not familiar with my utter disregard for the English language when it comes to phrases, you can check out my Melissaisms post so you understand what a “Lucy skit” is, especially if you were born before the year 1980.

My back has been sore, really sore, for about four weeks now.  Some days, I felt like Fonzie in his “old suit” from Happy Days moaning and groaning as I rolled out of bed.  No, seriously, I literally had to roll out of bed, let my feet flop onto the floor, and then drag myself up by the bedpost.  If it didn’t hurt so much, it’d be pretty hilarious.  Actually, never mind, it hurt and it’s still funny.  Laugh away.  It took me three minutes to make my way to the bathroom for morning ablutions (which is not the same as absolutions, by the way).

Anyway, on this particular day, the pain was so bad that I just decided to stay in bed, rock the heating pad, and catch up on Season 1 of Suits.  Epicurially speaking, I was exceptionally well stocked with my Trader Joes baked corn chips, a big bottle of orange seltzer fresh from the frigid-y fridge, and my iPad.  There may have been some chocolate.  Look, I’m wounded, chocolate heals all ailments.  Don’t you judge me!

So I’m flopped down in bed, pillow under my knees, heating pad scorching my back (I really need to figure out how to lower the temp on that thing), enjoying the episode of Suits where Harvey and his protege, Mike, trade witty movie quotes and Harvey solves an insolvable legal situation within the last three minutes of the episode, when I have this strange thought:

Huh…this bottle of seltzer sure is sweating.

I touch my leg and it’s damp.  Seriously, people, this is the way my mind works.  I think:

Wow, that fridge must have been cold.

I ignore the bottle and continue watching the show.  Did I notice that the bottle was on its side?  Sure, but the cap was on.  That’s the great thing about caps: they keep the liquid inside the bottle.

I finish the episode and move on to the next one.  But my leg is really wet now and so I tap it again.  Then, I partially lift the covers and see a wet spot the size of a baseball on the bed.  My first thought is:

But the cap was closed…

Or was it?

Doesn’t matter.  This looks bad and there is no way I can pin it on the cat.  Cats simply do not urinate orange seltzer.  Plus, I get it into my head that my husband is going to think that I wet the bed in the middle of the afternoon.  (Swing back to the illogical comment about urine and smell.)

So, after a moment or two of, “I can’t believe that bottle leaked”, now I’m cheesed because my back hurts and I gotta hide the evidence that I was eating in bed!  Okay, corn chips, tossed on the floor.  Luckily, they landed open side up or that would have added insult to injury.  Get it?  Injury?  Back injury?  Whatever.  The mint M&Ms (oh right, that’s what I was eating) land on the night table beside me, clicking against each other in the (thankfully) sealed bag.

At this point, it still hasn’t dawned on me that liquid and a heated blanket make for “electrifying”, yet potentially Darwinian, stories and that I’d probably dodged a major bullet.  I managed to wriggle gracelessly out from under it and drop it on the floor.

I finally (again) flop myself off the bed, but not before fighting with the cover sheet and comforter, which had suddenly wound themselves around my legs and the pillow while I was trying to escape from the heating pad.  Let me tell you, every single twist ached.  You know the kind.  The one where you surprise yourself with a yelp.   I was like a puppy surprised by the bite of a really big flea.

Okay, now that I’m finally out of the bed, I have to bend over and pull all the covers back to get a good look at the mattress.

Wow.  That’s a lot of liquid.

That’s not a baseball, that’s a beach ball!

We’ve had an issue with particularly industrious (and committed) ants in the kitchen lately and I start to freak out, thinking all sorts of inane things.  You’d think I was on some kind of psychotropic drug with all the freakouts, but no, it’s just my own mind doing it’s thing.  So I have this scenario in my head where these ants somehow make their way from the kitchen, all the way through the living-room, down the hall, into our bedroom, smack dab into the middle of the mattress.  And then I start to imagine all these little creatures nested inside the bed,  burrowing and having babies, waiting until the black of night when we’re asleep and unaware, to slip out and start walking over my face and arms.  I started feeling invisi-ants immediately.  (Seriously, I just had to check my arm.  Even just writing this, I totally thought I had one walking over it.)

Not much I can do about the mattress, so I have to lug that freaking comforter off the bed.  The cat freaks out and thinks it’s play time at the zoo.  He launches himself onto the covers and has a field day.  Now I have to get the fitted sheet off the bed, along with the pillow top cover thingy, which means (you guessed it) more leaning, more stretching, more groans.

Rather than just lift and carry, instead, I grab the fitted/pillowtop and drag them down the hall.  Miko goes crazy and chases the sheet all the way down the hall.  I have to somehow get this mass of fabric out the door without the cat (who is an indoor cat, but likes to spontaneously make a break for it when the side door is open), down the steps, close the door (more twiiiiistinggggg), and into the garage where the washer and dryer are.

Mission one accomplished, I go back inside where the cat was waiting for me with his nose pressed against the crack of the door, ready to bolt.  One stern command from me and he backed off.  I was in no mood!

Now I have to go back for the dang comforter, which is bulky and heavy and wetter than I thought.  If I can’t lift some iddy biddy sheet and a pillow top, you know I’m going to be miserable with this thing.  So, whatever.  Deal, Mel.  I grab it and begin dragging.  This thing is far more voluminous that the other fabric and it’s clunky!  I’m draaaaaagging it through the house, doing a little impromptu floor sweep as I make my way down the hall, and draaaag it through the recycle bags, and the cat dish, and the shoes, and the ant traps right by the door in the kitchen.

Another warning to the cat as I slide open the dining room door and haul that thing outside, close the door and try and flop it on the outdoor chair to air out.  Well, I can’t get the stupid thing to hang right so that the wet part is facing the sun!  So I’m fiddling with this fabric monstrosity, grabbing (and pulling, and tweaking my back) more chairs over so finally I have this tent-like structure made out of comforter in the backyard.

I get back inside and open the sliding glass door in the bedroom with the hope that the breeze will help with speed-drying the mattress.  It didn’t occur to me that perhaps a door to the outside world just a few feet away was even easier access for ants.  Unlike the kitchen, say, which was all the way on the other side of the house.  Finally, I just had to accept the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to replace the mattress with a new one by the time Ron got home and maybe ants weren’t attracted to orange seltzer.  It’s not like it was a sugar-filled (‘scuse me, corn syrup-filled) bottle of Coke.  Maybe seltzer (even flavoured) was too bitter to even be appetizing?

Back to the bed.  I’m not even near done.  I still have to replace the fitted sheet!

Anyone who has ever made a bed knows that the fitted sheet is the worst part.  The leaning.  The bending.  The lifting.  The slip of fabric falling back.  The lifting again.  The tucking.  The realization that the stupid sheet is facing the wrong direction!  So now I gotta fight with that.

Again, the cat’s riding the sheet like it’s Splash Mountain in Disneyland.  I’m not going to lie when I say to you that I considered just locking him inside it, cute or not.

So all of this pretty much kills my movement-free day.  Hours later, the sheets have been replaced, the bed is made.  Before Ron even had a chance to ask, I had to spill my guts about the seltzer.

After all that, his response was:

That mattress hurts my back.  We should replace it .

Roll credits.

And yes, the cat was all up in my grill when I pulled the comforter inside, dragged it down the halls (through the stuff, and stuff), and up onto the bed to make it.  Again, he was all yeehaaaaa!!! flinging himself on top of the comforter, under it, around it, like a cowboy on a bucking bronco.  Clearly, if he was a good cat, he would have been more sensitive to the fact that Mommy’s back hurt and to knock that crap off!

Seriously, this is just a day in the life of me.  I can’t make this stuff up.