When It Rains...

Have you ever had one of those weeks (or days, or months) where it seems as though everything stressful is all happening at once?
I'm not trying to complain (okay, maybe I am just a little), but I kind of feel as though I've been stuck in that mode for a few weeks now.
Let me describe a morning to illustrate my point--last Friday.
Friday was the morning of the ginormous dance that Yours Truly was in charge of putting on for the entire town...remember me mentioning that one?  Well, that morning was...eventful, to say the least.  Allow me to tell a few details from said morning:
I get up before the kids, read my scriptures, and then hear Maggie fussing, so I go in to get her.  Her eyes are completely glued shut with green goopy stuff.
Great.  Pink eye.  That kind of screws up my original babysitting plans...I had planned at basically being at the church for the majority of the day in order to finish preparations for the dance, and had asked a friend with young children to watch my kiddos...that's not gonna work anymore.
I grab a wet paper towel and call my Mom to ask her to watch the kids, then hear Jack and Clark playing--with the accompaniment of some very loud thuds--in their room.
I wipe Maggie's eyes off and change her diaper, then put her in her high chair with some cold cereal, making a mental note that we're nearly out, and open the boys' room door.
They have not only dumped out all of their toys and half of their clothes, but they have also completely dismantled Jack's bed, turned the mattress onto the floor, and broken the plywood supports into halves.
I try not to snap, but kind of do anyways, and I ask the unanswerable question asked by millions of parents through the centuries:
"Jack, Clark--what were you thinking?!??"
Jack has the decency to look sheepish, but Clark is gleeful.  "We wanted to make a cave!"
Argh!
Okay.
I run into the garage to get the drill and a bunch of screws, and decide to put the bed back together before dropping the kids off at my mom's before heading to the church building to decorate.  As I'm grunting and heaving and picking up  pieces of plywood, I catch a whiff of poop.
"Clark, are you poopy?"  I ask.
"No!" He is adamant.  I check him--well, he may not be poopy, but he's completely soaked through his diaper and pajamas, and now that I'm looking closer at his bed (off of which they ripped the sheets), I see the marks of a pretty wet night for my little guy.
Stupid generic diapers.
I sigh.  "Take off your pjs and go stand in the tub.  I'll come rinse you off."
Clark starts to cry.
I fit the plywood into place and start screwing the first piece into place.
I'm terrible at using an electric drill, by the way.
I catch Jack sneaking out the door when I realize I still haven't found the source of the poop smell.  "Jack--did you poop your pants?"
"No," he looks as innocent as can be, which doesn't fool me--I've seen that look before.
"C'mere."  He obediently walks over to me, and I see the evidence I need.
"Did you just lie to me?"  I ask.
Scared now, he nods.
"Go in the bathroom.  Take off your clothes, clean your underwear out in the toilet."  I'm not sure what consequence to give him for the lying, but I can at least get him started on cleaning up while I fix the bed.
I turn back to the bed and start to drill the corner...I strip the screw.  I don't cuss, but I want to; I set the drill down and head out to the garage to grab a different kind of screw.  Hopefully one that won't strip this time.
I come back in to hear Maggie squawk angrily--she's out of cereal.
I go to the sink, wash my hands, and pour her some more cereal, only to hear the buzzing of the drill from the boys' room.
Crud!  I left the drill out where the boys could reach it.
I run back to the boys' room--Clark, still in soaked pajamas, is watching Jack, clad only in his dirty underwear, as he plays with the drill.  When I come in the door, Jack drops it, looking guilty.
"Get back in the bathroom!  Now!"  I snap.
They don't argue.
I finish screwing the bed back together, stripping three more screws in the process, then pick up all of the urine-soaked sheets to throw in the washer.
I walk past the bathroom.
Both boys are naked, but not in the tub, and Jack is attempting to rinse his underwear out in the toilet, getting you-know-what everywhere in the process.
I sigh again.
"Jack--get in the tub.  Clark, you too."  Jack drops his underwear, I turn on the shower and rinse them both off (both boys are screaming by this point--to hear them get a warm shower would make you think I was slowly murdering the both of them).  I get them out and wrap them each in a towel.
"Go back in your room.  Jack, get dressed, Clark, I'll come help you in a minute after I clean up in here."
I wipe down the toilet, get the underwear and other dirty clothes and put them in the washer along with the bedding (I LOVE my huge front-loading washer for this very reason), then hear another thudding--I enter the doorway to see both Jack and Clark, stark naked, jumping up and down on the reassembled bed.
We'll draw a kind curtain over the rest of the scene at this point, but rest ye assured that I did not escape from the experience completely unscathed; I was still trying to decompress by the time I got to the church to decorate.
Anyways.  So, to tell the end of the story, the kids had a blast at my mom's, and the Sweetheart Ball ended up being adorable.

So, the moral of this story is that poop happens--sometimes literally--but life goes on and things can get accomplished, anyways.
Yay for that.