Seven Years Bad Luck

I didn't mention it before, but when I was cleaning house on Sunday, I was trying to move a small bookcase back against the wall after unplugging the vacuum, and something on the bookcase bumped into the mirror that hung above it and knocked the mirror down. Shattered, of course. I was kind of bummed but I'm not very superstitious, and since I was heading out to Target anyway, I figured I could simply replace the mirror.

As I was getting ready to leave for Target, I sat down on the bed to put on my shoes and sat on my reading glasses. Yep, they were kind of bent up, but I was able to bend them back. Mostly.

The next day (Monday), as I mentioned, we had a slight turkey mishap. Coulda happened to anyone. Or maybe I should say it coulda happened to any one who has a husband who doesn't pay attention and who leaves that same husband in charge of checking the turkey. (By the way, is that redundant? "Husband" and "doesn't pay attention"?)

Tonight (Tuesday) I had planned to stay up late and shampoo the carpet in the living room. See, one of the things that turns the whole Christmas decorating thing into quite the ordeal for me is that for some silly reason, I seem to pick this time of the year to do what most people call "Spring cleaning." Weird, huh? It just seems to me that as I'm climbing around decorating and moving furniture and such, I might as well do some good cleaning. So tonight I moved the furniture and vacuumed the carpet, and then I got out the carpet shampooer and filled the soapy water container and the hot water container and plugged it in and got started. After a little bit I realized it wasn't spitting the hot soapy water onto the carpet although it was sucking water up.

You may be wondering how I know it was sucking water up if it wouldn't spit it out. Well, genius that I am, when I realized something was wrong, I thought I'd just tilt the thing a little to see if I could look underneath and figure out why it wasn't "spitting." That, of course, caused a bunch of the water in the reservoir to spill out, thus requiring the "sucking up" feature of the shampooer.

When I realized the darn thing just wasn't going to work, I went into the bedroom where my husband was trying to sleep, and stood on his side of the bed and stared at him until he opened his eyes to see what I was doing. After I explained the problem to him and didn't go away, he wandered out to the garage in his underwear to see if he could fix the shampooer. Frankly I think he got too cold out there to really try very hard, because a few minutes later, he came back in, said he couldn't fix it, and headed back to bed. Of course, I then took the thing apart myself and cleaned it really well and tried it again, but it still didn't work. I guess breaking a mirror really does bring bad luck.

So I got a pot of hot soapy water and a soft brush and got down on hands and knees and did the worst parts the old fashioned way. At least I was able to use the shampooer to suck the water up again. I think I'll go out and buy a new one.

The day wasn't a total loss, though. I do have some photos to show you of what I did get done.

I spent about four hours or so taking down all my fall decoratings and gathering up my quilts and bedding for the wash. And although I've since washed, folded, and put away all the quilts and bedding, all the fall decorations are still piled on my kitchen table. I probably would have put them away tonight except the carpet shampooing thing took longer than I expected.

This is our Christmas cookie jar. When I told my husband that it would not be filled with Christmas cookies this year because of our diet, he cried. Now that I think about it, maybe that's why he didn't really try to fix the carpet shampooer. Passive-aggressive tendencies. I think I'll probably put the cookie jar up on top of the hutch in the kitchen, though, because I think it's cute.

I got my Christmas bedding onto our bed and did a few other things in our bedroom, but I have to go shopping to buy new sheers for the window--the old ones are just about falling apart. So I'll get to the Christmas window treatment once I get the sheers. The quilt on top of the bedspread is the same pattern I used for the quilt I made for my boss last year and showed you earlier this week. (Silly cat likes to pose for photos. In my next life, I'm coming back as a cat. If the hardest thing I had to do was lay on the bed and be fat, I think I could manage quite nicely.)

Last of all, I finished quilting and binding my Trees on the Table tree skirt. In fact, after my last post Monday night, I went into the Sweat Shop and stayed up until 3:30 a.m. quilting--too much coffee after dinner, I think. Between taking fall decorations down, cleaning, and doing a little decorating, I took a few breaks and managed to get it bound, so it's ready to go once I get the kitchen tree up. (I'll need to wash it first to get the markings out, and don't look too closely at the spacing of the quilting lines in the green border--that was done around 2:30 a.m. and is far from perfect! I don't care--done is better than perfect, right?!)

Tomorrow (actually today), I'll need to do the above-mentioned shopping for a shampooer and sheers, finish decorating my bedroom, and do some more cleaning. More photos to come as the decorating progresses. I do hope I won't need to report any more unexpected, unlucky set backs. Hasn't it been seven years yet?!