A House Isn't a Home Until . . .

. . . someone spills nail polish all over the carpet.  I ran out to the store this afternoon to get embroidery floss for Lexi who wanted to make friendship bracelets for the girls she’s missing back home. Oh yeah, and one for Eric too.  :) Then I stopped at the store for Jackson’s medicine and I went to the bank to open a checking account here. While the teller was entering my information in her computer, I felt my phone vibrate. Seeing the text was from Jackson, I glanced at the message. “Brooklyn spilled nail polish on the carpet.”

I had just finished telling the banker that I wrote humorous parenting books. “I have six kids and they provide me with plenty of material,” I’d boasted. After seeing Jackson’s text, I looked up and continued, “For example,” I indicated my phone, “apparently my five-year-old has spilled nail polish on the new carpet.”

The banker didn’t miss a beat and used the opportunity to tell me about their home equity loans with which I could buy new carpeting. I just nodded and smiled, but thought, ‘Why on earth would I spend money on carpet that’s just going to be destroyed again? Did I learn nothing from the nail polish incident? Have I learned nothing from the past 16 1/2 years with kids?’

Upon seeing the extent of the damage when I arrived back home, I tweeted that I had broken glass and multi-colored nail polish splats all over the carpet. People wrote back asking if Brooklyn was still alive. They said they would’ve lost it and flipped out. Others emailed me, asking if I’d beaten her into next week.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m mad that there’s nail polish on the carpet. It stinks. But, what good would freaking out do? What good would yelling at Brooklyn do? It was an accident. She was trying to reach the container of nail polish on a high shelf and it fell to the ground, causing several bottles to break. If I freaked out and yelled, what would it accomplish? The nail polish would still be on the floor. And Brooklyn would feel worse than she already did. I can’t count how many times she said, “I’m sorry, Mommy.” I had never instructed her to stay out of the polish. In fact, quite the opposite is true. I’ve told her to pick out a color so I could paint her nails many times.

I know it’s easy to simply react. But it’s important to take a minute to stop and think. Nail polish on the floor is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Do you think the parents of the little boy who was recently found dismembered in Brooklyn would give a crap if he spilled a truckload of polish on the floor? Do you think Mimi would care if Julian spilled a gallon of paint on the floor? I’m pretty sure they’d just be thrilled to have their little boys.

Anyway, the nail polish was pretty dry by the time I got to it. I used a steam cleaner which basically just made the carpet wet and had no effect on the crusty polish. Then I grabbed a small pair of scissors and carefully trimmed the polish-soaked carpet fibers. It helped a lot, but I couldn’t get it all. Well, I could’ve, but then I’d have lovely sculptured carpet which would be fine if it was say, 1970. Seriously, we had lovely pea green, sculptured carpeting in our living room while I was growing up. Sigh, there was really nothing attractive about that era, was there?

So now the carpet looks like this.

186 300x200 A House Isnt a Home Until . . .


It’s an improvement, but it’s still, well, it’s kinda, uh, who am I kidding? It still looks awful. But it also looks like a mom and six kids live here. It didn’t take us long at all to break in our new house, huh? I’d say it’s now officially a home. And I think I just found the perfect spot for that potted plant.