Sweet merciful crap! Five minutes!

A single friend of mine and I were discussing the [fantastic] website $&#% My Kids Ruined and she said "what I want to know is, where are the parents when the kids are doing all of this?"
If you're a parent and you're reading this, you probably share my intital slightly insulted reaction, and perhaps my following sentiment of "oh, you'll see someday, someday when your own kid makes a peanut butter n' jelly sandwich with your new laptop, you'll see. And I'll laugh."

But as for this afternoon, I'll tell you where I was, for only five minutes while my kids cooked up some hot humble pie for me.

We've been working on the home addition, which causes me to interact with alot of real adults and big checks, and measurements and deadlines. On the phone, I try to sound really normal. I actually try to avoid dealing directly with humans in person at all (see previous post) but when it comes to flooring, gotta have people come and measure, no matter what.
So I scheduled a time for floor-guy to come, which was this afternoon, right after school. My last words to my little buttercups were "change into playground clothes, as soon as he leaves, we'll go"

I walk out to meet [Michael Chiarello's flooring doppleganger] and I'm immediately aware when I shake his hand how normal he is and how blue my hair is and how daisy my dukes are.

I show him the areas under construction using as many industry vocabulary terms as I can stuff into a sentence. He measures and then he said "and your hallway?"

{{{{violin screech}}}}

"right, the hallway-- um, come around this way," I say as I silently debate whether it's sounds crazier to forewarn that I have little kids or say nothing and hope for the best.

Upon opening the hallway door, this is what I, and more importantly what "Chiarello'" saw:

1.entire bag of cheddar bunnies dumped and crushed.
2. two chihuhuas scurrying for the hills (read: dirty laundry baskets)
3. one 6 yr old sobbing and holding a broken backyard chicken egg in each hand and struggling to offer explanation.
4. one totally naked 4 yr old with poopy butt repeatedly exclaiming "mom! You gotta wipe my butt!"

You got those measurements? Ok good.--" --*door close*