OK, Can I Be Done Now? Please?

I honestly don't remember the last time I was this frustrated.

I'll try to start at the beginning and type through the tears. I'm not a crier, so seriously, I have HAD IT right about now.

We are dog sitting for a friend while he and his girlfriend are out of state for a week and a half. He has two dogs, a small older dog and a large puppy (about 16 months old). The smaller one is a mini pinscher. The large one is a mutt but is brindle colored and has to be part boxer and maybe part greyhound.

In general they're great dogs, but I've had it with them today.

First of all, I'm not a believer in having animals on the furniture. This may stem from having been the owner of a 100+ lb dog, but whatever. It's one thing having a 7lb dog on your couch, but it's quite another having the 75lb dog join you, or just lounge there all day.

At any rate, Dog the Smaller found our sectional today. The sectional is where I keep my beads. He knocked over a sorted box of beads. Now, understand, in my three or so years of beading, I have never knocked over a box of beads. Dreaded it, but never done it. I shooed the dogs into the backyard and cleaned up the considerable mess. There are 12-15 compartments in a bead box, each with its own type of bead, and most of these were on the floor.

Less than an hour later, with Dog the Smaller upstairs with me, I heard another telltale crash. I jumped up, yelling, "NO YOU DIDN'T!" but of course I was too late; Dog the Larger had jumped up on the sectional and found the ONE bead box I'd left uncovered. He didn't dump it off the couch like the earlier box -- he apparently just stepped on the edge -- but most of the beads jumped up out of their compartments and into other compartments, and lots of them were scattered all over outside the box. I was furious. Again I shooed the dogs outside (this time in a much louder voice) and cleaned up the mess.

While outside, Dog the Larger managed to pull off his own collar and chew on the tags, almost chewing one completely off. Ah, puppies.

When Son the Younger, who is grounded, came home shortly after these altercations, I told him the dogs needed to be walked. He doesn't like walking the dogs, he informed me. It's the most frustrating thing he's ever done, he said. However, it's part of the job and the reason he's getting paid to watch the little darlings, so I told him it needed to be done. This didn't go over well, and we're not on the best of terms due to the grounding anyway, so there's been a lot of "not speaking to each other" going on this evening.

With all the stress, I decided the antidote would be to go out and melt some glass, enjoying my new kiln in the process. I haven't gotten a chance to try it out yet, and I'm just so excited by the fact that I don't have to traipse down to central Austin to have beads annealed anymore. So I went out to the garage, spent some time putting in the program for the annealing, and set about making some beads for a friend's mom for Christmas.

I noticed when I put the beads in the kiln that it wasn't as searingly hot as I remembered the kilns at the glass shop being, but I didn't think much of it because mine is built really differently. I just figured all the heat was centered way back in there.

Once I was done with four beads, I looked at the flashing display on my beloved new kiln: "tcr." What the heck? I pulled out my handy dandy book and looked it up. Turns out it's an error message: thermocouple reversed.

That's right: my kiln is broken.

So I put all my beads back in the fiber blanket, where they'll probably crack because they cooled down too quickly, and I came in to tell my hubby that the new, very expensive purchase is no good.

And now I have to do some work. I'd really just as soon secede from the household, and from life, for a bit, but I guess that's not an option, huh?

Mama said there'd be days like this.