Saturday Is a Messy Day

Saturday was the day of mess.  Not just one, but many, and ALL DAY.  And, of course, it was the day I had put all of my procrastinating hopes and desperate errands into. 
It even started out fairly well.  The kids and Cliff went camping for the night with my dad, and we all met up for breakfast the next morning at my parents' house.  It was wonderful, and I was glad that everyone was coming back home.  It was just too quiet without them, and it didn't help that I decided to watch Veronica Mars find the body of a girl in the ratty hotel ice machine.  Just the thing to help me go to sleep.  All by myself.  In my big creaky house.  At least Cliff talked me out of buying that huge body sized ice machine and putting it in the basement.
Anyway, after every one was home, I went downstairs to start some laundry and found the first mess.  Water was dripping from the ceiling in the laundry room.  I told Cliff, who was trying to sleep because he and a stick decided to fight all night over who had the right to sleep on a certain piece of ground, and he came down to stare at the huge ceiling paint water balloon that was forming and still dripping ominously. 
I ran outside to where Nadia was both drowning and washing our dog, and told her to turn the water off.  Back inside, Cliff found a bucket and poked a hole into the first big water balloon before I could take a picture of it.  Yeah, I told him next time we have a house catastrophe he needs to take a picture of it first so I can blog.  And maybe show the insurance people later.  The man really needs to look at his priorities in a crisis. 
The ceiling was still leaking, so Cliff turned off the water to the house and went online to check to see what we needed to do insurance-wise.  Good to see that we would be covered, but we still weren't quite sure what was causing the leak.  No laundry happened.
While this was going on, I went on to vacuuming.  Hey, chores still needed to get done, right?  I started on that and also started to wonder what would happen on Sunday and Monday if the water was still off.  We had stinky camp people, piles of school clothes to wash, and small bladders.  More small bladders would be joining us on Monday, as I have agreed to some babysitting during this new school year, and if the water was off in order to fix a pipe, what was I going to do?
So, we now have a water mess, a babysitting mess, and a floor mess because the vacuum was just moving the dog hair into neat little lines.
I was too angry to cry.  We were just barely getting ahead of our medical/dental bills, and now this.  I angrily tore the vacuum apart to find the problem.  I checked all the filters (there are 3) for clogs, the belt, the canister, and then the entire length of the hose.  Do you know what I found?  A sock and a bouncy ball. 
While reassembling the monster, Benjamin came up and asked me if I had seen a ball that he had "put away" in the vacuum.  I think I need to have another talk about how we help with cleaning up and chores.  It did give me a good laugh, though.
I came up to the kitchen to make lunch when I found the next mess.  Brandon had decided to get some koolaid, and spilled.  I am okay with that, but not with the whole leaving it on the floor until some one finds it with her foot.  He had to clean it up. 
We found out that the laundry room mess was caused by Nadia washing the dog and the house at the same time.  There is no caulking or sealant underneath the sliding glass door that goes to the back yard.  Hmmm.  Maybe that explains the frozen laundry room water pipes every winter.  Water was turned back on in the house.
I decided to rinse up any sticky residue in the kitchen before we left to go to the Chukars baseball game.  This was the final mess.  There was a pinhole leak in the water line to the fridge.  Brandon had spilled very little, and the rest had been from this leak.  We turned off the water to the fridge and will get a little coupling piece to fix it.  In the mean time, our ice maker is off.  Which is just fine with me.