The Most Epic Mess Ever!

It was a rookie mistake. For 15 minutes, I actually closed my bathroom door and TOOK A SHOWER. My three children (at the time) were all older then … what could possibly happen in 15 minutes?

A rice parade, that’s what.

“Mooooommmm!” my oldest daughter bellowed. “Christian exploded a bag of rice!” That’s fine, I thought to myself. How bad could it be? We’ll just vacuum it up.
“Get the vacuum!” I bellowed back, drying my hair. Half dressed, I opened the bathroom door and peered into my bedroom. Thousands of grains of rice were scattered all over the hardwood floor.

I heard the vacuum, but it was coming from down the hall. Hmm. That’s funny.

Or not …

Rice in my bedroom. Rice in my sitting room. Rice on the landing. Rice down the hall. I finally reached the noise of the busy vacuum, sucking up hundreds of grains of rice a second. Rice in the nursery. The children were clustered around, doing their best to vacuum the carpet. “But wait, Mom!” my daughter shook her head. “There’s more!”

Christian had dumped rice down the stairs and into the lobby. At this point, I knew I had to take pictures of the chaos – so I tiptoed downstairs to get my camera. Surely the carnage must have ended in the lobby! Nope. Rice in the library. Rice in the kitchen. Rice in the dining room. FOURTEEN ROOMS of my not-small-house covered in rice.

Needless to say, any plans for the day were out the door. I spent the entire rest of the day (and several days after), painstakingly vacuuming, sweeping, and mopping up rice.

So now, three years later, what was the amazing lesson I learned from the rice parade?

I guess it is that no matter how hard you try to control and schedule your life, everyone needs to take a break sometimes. I mean, we all need showers! (Some more than others). And sometimes, because we can’t be on guard 24/7, bad crazy things just happen. (Well, A LOT of times, if you have wild, fun little kids in your life).

The important thing is to face the reality of the situation, and that it is your job to clean up the mess. And it might be long, and hard, and frustrating, and sad. And it might derail your current plans for the day. Or days. Or months. Or years. But in the end, inexplicably, (hopefully!) you are left not with the memory of hours spent vacuuming up tiny grains of rice, but rather the memory of the survival of a significant life challenge. And then – at long last – you smile.

(At least, that’s what I think I learned ... to be honest, I mostly just wanted to post this story so you could commiserate with me over the amazingness that was this epic disaster. Ha!)