Not off to a good start...

So 2010 hasn't really come in with a "Bang," so much as a "POP!" - of a waterbed, that is...

Was it only two days ago that I waxed poetic here about improving my outlook on life? New beginnings and all that for 2010? Hmmm... apparently I forgot that I have teenagers - a 17-year-old in particular. I won't make that mistake again.

Yesterday after church I was just getting ready to settle in for some much-needed relaxation, when Braden nonchalantly walked in the room to inform me that "Evan needs help with his waterbed. He was moving the mattress and now there's water going everywhere."

"Surely he's joking," I thought to myself, but he was a little too calm, usually a dead give-away that something big's going down. If he'd been frantic and hyper I would have known he was just trying to mess with my mind.

Sighing, I got up and trudged downstairs.

Here's the deal: Evan decided that he wanted to repaint his room, yet again. Since he now has his own job and his own money, he decided he didn't need to check with us to see if that'd be okay. To be fair, I've usually felt like "it's his room and he has to live with it, so whatever."

Several months ago he decided that he "HAD" to have a waterbed. Tom and I put up a good fight, giving all the reasons why he shouldn't have one. But he did his homework, finding articles showing that even if a waterbed "sprung a leak," it wouldn't flood like you would think due to pressure, linings, yadda yadda yadda... I honestly don't remember what all, but it sounded good enough that we finally relented. He really did need a new bed, so when he found a good used waterbed for $50 in the paper, we got it for him.

Since then he has emptied it and moved it at least 3 times, because he likes to rearrange. A. Lot. Because the poor, used thing has been moved so many times, and because it was probably so old and abused to begin with, this last move so that he could paint his walls was one time too many and the frame fell apart, but not before the now-exposed screws ripped not just one but several gaping holes.

By the time I got downstairs, the carpet was considerably "squishy," but Evan's girlfriend, a good sport who had offered to help him paint, was holding the worst part up. Of course we don't have a shop-vac, so Evan and I rushed into Hyrum to buy one ($55 - already more than the original cost of the stupid bed). An hour or so and probably fifty 5-gallon bucket trips of water up the stairs and outside later, the mattress was empty enough that Evan and Braden decided it would be light enough to carry upstairs and outside.

As you may have guessed, they were wrong. About halfway up the stairs, one end (not surprisingly the end with the biggest hole) was dropped, sending another cascade of water all over Braden, the stairs, and the carpet at the bottom.

To say that Evan was stressed out and pissed off at this point would be an understatement. As was I... I believe I said something about "ungrateful, #($)&..." They carried it back down and emptied 10 more bucketfuls. Eventually we got it emptied and Evan got the rest of it out. And now he sleeps on the couch.

But he did get the room painted. His colors of choice, which we didn't see until late last night when he was done? Black, black, black. Black walls (all four), and a black ceiling, with a yellow and white "Army" logo he did himself. Ai-yi-yi...

Rest in pieces, old friend...