Toilet Sauce

We made spaghetti last night.  Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am all about the easy meal, especially when I invite someone over for dinner.  I do not need the kind of pressure that comes with that moment just between when your guests sit down to the table and when they take their first bite.  Too stressful to listen to people go on and on about how fabulous the food is if I have actually created the dish, because I am certain that they are lying.  Even more stressful to have them say nothing and ask for a beverage refill while chewing panickedly.

I come from a long line of very bad cooks.  My mom once set her wallpaper on fire while cooking a tortilla on the top of a toaster.  You might think that sounds impossible, but I have eaten at my Mom’s house and seen the scorch marks.

So screw it.  Better to go with spaghetti and jarred sauce and call it a day.  If they hate it, they can take it up with Trader Joe.

So with a half hour to go before our guests were due to arrive, Mark put the water on the stove-top to boil and I searched the downstairs pantry for noodles.  For some reason, the girls had strong and differing opinions about the diameter of the noodles to be boiled (I told you, they can argue about anything), and eventually all four of us ended up downstairs arguing the relative merits of spaghetti noodles versus capellini noodles.  Augh.

We finally settled on spaghetti noodles, and we all headed upstairs.  Mark threw the smaller dog Jack a yellow rubber bone to keep him occupied while we set the table.  Jack has been known to climb up onto the table to see what is being served, and while that is sometimes funny, the dining room’s large window looks out toward the front porch of our house.  Small disheveled dog standing in the middle of the table helping himself to bread and sipping milk from a glass is not the first impression one hopes to make on one’s guests.  So Jack was happily chewing his bone as we went upstairs to discover . . .

That the main floor of the house was filled with gas.

So with twenty minutes to go before our guests were to arrive, the girls and I opened every window and door and tried to clear the poisonous gas from the house.  Mark had turned the gas on under the pasta water, but he had failed to notice that it hadn’t actually ignited.  Mark continued with the serious business of pouring sauce from a jar into a pan as the girls and I ran frantically about with magazines, flapping the air to try to clear the house.  I guess his thinking went something like, “We might all be killed in a giant gaseous explosion, and yes, that would be entirely my fault, but on the off chance that doesn’t happen, let’s be sure dinner is ready on time.”

And then Mark started barking out orders that someone get him a “cistern” into which to pour the spaghetti sauce for serving.  Huh?  Isn’t a cistern a huge cement receptacle for rainwater?  Or the back part of the toilet that stores water for flushing?

So I was standing there thinking about whether to mention to Mark that he had just asked that one of us make it possible for him to serve spaghetti sauce from the toilet when there was screaming from downstairs.

Something about blood.

Somehow, Jack the dog had cut his mouth on the soft rubber bone.  A regular dog might wisely decide that once blood has been drawn, that is probably enough play with that particular toy.  But Jack is a terrier, and he seemed to interpret the blood as an escalation in the battle between dog and bone.  So he had gone nuts, grabbing the bone by its rubber jugular and trying to shake the life out of it.

How do I know?

Because streams of bloody drool had been sprayed and thrown all over a large area of wall and carpet at the bottom of the basement stairs.

So with ten minutes to go before our guests were due to arrive, I was chasing a bloody-faced terrier around the house, trying to convince him to give up his bone.  Caught him, locked him up in the basement shower, and then began the task of wiping the worst of the splattered gore from our walls and carpet.

If, when we eventually move out of this house, Luminal is involved in the landlord’s move-out inspection, we are going to have some explaining to do.

Terriers should come with a huge warning label stapled to their heads.

Headed back upstairs expecting our guests at any moment.

Only to hear an ominous beeping from the laundry room off of the kitchen, where the washing machine was flashing and beeping excitedly about “F-11, F-11, F-11!!!!” Apparently, F-11 is a failure of some sort.  Of course it is.

Mark and I are stabbing at buttons trying to make the beeping stop; Kallan announces that I need to come and help her change her turtle’s tank right now; and Maj wants to know when I am going to buy her knee socks to wear with her new boots.

And then the phone rang.  I waved for everyone to shush as I hurried the phone away from the beeping F-11 warning.  “Hello?”

It was our would-be guests.  Cancelling at the last minute.  Apologetic and explaining that with the baby and the toddler and the traffic and the screaming and the frayed nerves, it was all too stressful and chaotic.  Which I understand.

I know about chaos.