I knew it was going to be a rough day because I woke up that night with a ridiculous anxiety attack.

Not all anxiety attacks are ridiculous. Most of mine are. I was not up worrying about how to pay for college (no idea), or whether I’m spending enough time volunteering at my kids’ schools (no).

No, I was awake feeling panicked about the Diva’s wall decorations. We moved her into her own room Sunday night, but we didn’t have any furniture to give her so she’s sleeping on a pulled-out futon and using an old dresser for clothes. It’s quite the hodgepodge, and the walls have scuff and nail marks from all the fish art I removed. It used to be the playroom, with a fish theme. Now it looks like a room that a single man might rent at a downtown boarding house. She loves it.

Anyway, I lay awake for two hours trying not to obsess about how ridiculous her room looks, which I know is stupid so don’t lecture me about it. When I woke up the next morning, I felt exhausted, got up late, Hot Firefighter Husband trotted off to work and I began my 400-hour day.

The Pterodactyl was in an unusually good mood, though that’s becoming less rare now that I’m feeding him regularly. When he’s happy, he likes to play with his little sister. Together they were playing with the Tyrant’s Baby Alive doll which can really pee. The Pterodactyl is very bright, and came up with the idea of feeding Baby Alive lemon juice so she could pee yellow into the toilet. It was a brilliant idea, except that it traumatized the Tyrant for some reason and she went ballistic.

I very politely asked the Pterodactyl to hand me the lemony Baby Alive, and he spit at me. So I shoved him in his room. When he came out, he was furious, so he ripped all the feathers off of the adorable paper turkey he had made me last week.

Extreme remorse quickly followed, which meant I spent 15 minutes looking for the Scotch tape so he could put the feathers back in place. The Diva was late to school. Did I even need to say that?

The Tyrant refused to don her uniform, instead wearing the same filthy pink pwincess dwess and bootiful shut she has worn for the past three days running. And flip flops. No underpants. Since I’m practically selling plasma every month to pay her preschool bill, I dropped her at school and let her teachers take it from there.

At my boxing class we had an odd number of people so I couldn’t punch anybody.

Since I didn’t sweat too much because I couldn’t hit anyone, I did my fake-clean thing and just changed clothes without showering before going to teach my journalism class.

After that class, I had some “time to myself,” as HFHusband calls it. I used it to go to the grocery, which was not particularly restorative.

After picking up the pre-school kids, I plopped them in front of the television and started cleaning the kitchen. The floor felt a little slippery. Then it felt sloshy. Then I realized I was standing in a murky puddle. I opened up the cabinet under the sink and watched a broken pipe from the garbage disposal vomiting. Seriously. That’s the best way to describe pulverized eggplant, shrimp, noodles and orange membrane gushing forth like a high pressure hose. Vomit remnants floated under the cabinet in an inch-deep lake, and covered the walls of the cabinet.

“Shit!” I screeched. The children came running over. “Get out of here!” I screeched again. They returned to the television.

I texted a Mayday to Hot Firefighter Husband, who was in the middle of a training session about rooftop ventilation. He called and I yelled at him that I was too busy to talk about it so he hung up.

I used five beach towels and soaked up the slop. Then I re-attached the pipe and felt proud of myself because I had fixed it, so I ran the disposal because I’m the biggest fucking idiot on the planet and the flood happened again.

More screeching occurred. I used another five beach towels to clean up the new slop, which was still very vomit-like. Then I checked to make sure the pipes from the dishwasher weren’t connected to the broken pipes, and I ran the dishwasher because, again, I am the biggest fucking idiot on the planet. I went outside and played with the kids for a while. Returned to the kitchen to find more flooding. More screeching. Beach towels were all used up, so I had to use regular bath towels.

I could not look at the kitchen any longer so we went to Panera for dinner, which was a bright spot. Then we watched “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” ate sugar cookies with cake icing and went to bed without brushing our teeth.

Today seems a little better.