Did you ever have one of those days?

You know, the kind of day that nothing seemed to go right.  Or, if not the whole day then at least 20 minutes of the day were pure torture.  So, if your name is Stupid, then you can join me in commiserating my lack of intelligence this past Saturday.

So, I’m hosting a party for my two year old daughter, Muara.  What’s that?  Stop right there?  That is foolish enough in itself, I know, but that is only where it begins, my friend.  In preparation for the party I do…nothing.  Yes.  That’s right.  Nothing.  I treat it like any other Saturday on the calendar.

I take that back because that isn’t entirely true.  I did go to the grocery store at 6am.  Grandma was at the house, so I felt comfortable leaving everyone there (sleeping) whilst I picked up a few necessities.  Of course, ideas for the day’s party were flying into my head almost as quickly as I was zipping through the aisles.  What was supposed to be a milk run turned into another $130 grocery store trip.

Anyway, back to my preparation for the party (or lack there of).  I was hosting a “kids” party at lunch time and an “adult” party later in the afternoon.  (By adult, I mean parents and grandparents, etc.  You perverts.)  Just moments before the kids are supposed to arrive, I decide to clean my new pellet stove.  That requires a shop vac.  Aha!  I have one (thanks to my dad and my flooded basement).  All I have to do is convert it from the “wet” setting to the “dry” setting.

I can’t even convert a verb to past tense, how on earth was I supposed to know how to convert a wet/dry vac from wet to dry.  The whole concept of a wet/dry vac blows my little music teacher mind to begin with.

Back to the story…so I lug the machine up to the stove open the door and start to suck the ash from the fire box.  Sweet.  It was working swell.  That was, it was working well, right up until my mother yelled over the vacuum, “Marc!  Look.”  I looked behind me and sure enough, all that ash being sucked up in to the vacuum was just flying out the other side of the vacuum and filling up the room with a fine dust reminiscent of a volcanic ash cloud.

Grandma claims I swore, but I am certain that nothing I said at that moment was intelligible.

I stopped the vacuum and continued mumbling incoherently whilst I got the regular vacuum to suck the ash cloud from the room.  We opened up the doors and hoped a divine wind might swoop through the house taking the dust particles with it and leave the heat.  In the meantime, my kids are asphixiating and bumping into things while walking through the cloud of ash in the living room and my wife is wiping her glasses free of dust to see what’s going on (either that or she was wiping the tears of laughter out of her eyes).

After another false start (or two), I finally figured out what the problem was and how to resolve it.  Who knew you needed a filter (and a cap for the filter) when the vacuum is used for dry stuff?  The only thing I’ve ever sucked up with that vacuum had been sewage water or poop (that’s another story), how was I to know the proper functioning set up of the dry vacuum.

Believe it or not, I almost finished picking up my mess before the first guests arrived.  Thankfully, it was my brother and sister-in-law with my two nephews.  They already know I’m a bonehead and it didn’t surprise them in the least my most recent stupidcapades.

The rest of the day went very well.  Maura had a pair of good birthday celebrations and everyone seemed to have a good time.

So, if you’re a member of the Stupid club, please accept my application to become a member.  Oh?  I’ve already been elected president?  Excellent.

MW