Tequila at 10 a.m.?

My husband has just informed me that 10:43 a.m. is not an appropriate time to start drinking.  Ordinarily I would agree with him, but today I wholeheartedly disagree, because right now our household is simply way too stressful to bear whilst sober.  Here's what's going on:

1. We are infested with fleas.  And not the cool kind, like this:

Oh, no.  The absolutely revolting, armored parasitic kind, like this:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I HATE FLEAS!!!!  We've been battling them with Frontline, Borax, vacuuming, flea baths, endless laundry, etc. etc. for about six weeks, and they keep coming back.  They're on our pets, in our bed, on our couch, in our carpets, and laying their disgusting eggs anywhere a microscopic entity can fit (meaning every-fucking-where).  I am now in a constant state of creepy-crawly heebie-jeebies whenever I'm in my house.  Stupidly, over the past couple of days we'd thought we were starting to win this battle, but this morning I found 4 fleas.  I feel like burning the house down & shaving all the pets bald.

2.  Our dog has 8 stitches and a drainage tube in his head.  Right now he looks like an astronaut:

The other night I was taking a lovely, late-night walk with my two dogs, when suddenly two off-leash dogs who were out on a jog with their owner came bounding across the street.  I lifted my dog-aggressive dog up in the air by her harness and left the other one, who we refer to as "The Ambassador" because he's so gentle & friendly with all creatures, down on the ground to meet the dogs.  Well, the off-leash dogs proceeded to maul him, and now he is stitched, drugged, and has a cone head.  He has had two surgeries in the past two days.  I just went to give him a kiss and noticed that now he is covered in hives.  Awesome.

3.  Someone who lives over 1000 miles away is sending me an endless stream of text messages saying she's going to kill herself.  Trying to assess for safety and do a suicide intervention via text is no simple task, but she won't actually talk to me on the phone.  It feels like a prolonged, really stressful act of complete futility.

4.  Our basement has flooded.

This house is relatively new construction, and while we like it for the most part, there are some aspects that make me believe that, when the house was about 80% complete, the builder decided that all remaining work needed to be completed in 90 minutes.  Maybe this house was featured in some speed-building reality show I'm unaware of. 

So apparently the window downstairs was sealed & caulked appropriately, and then taken out, put back in, and not resealed.  For us, that has meant a flood and lots of structural water damage.  Two very nice Eastern European window dudes came out today to seal the outside, and they said they'll tell the builder that the inside needs to be fixed as well.  The bummer for us is that said builder is in the process of going bankrupt.  It's front page news.  Yay. 

[Tangentially:  In years to come, what will replace the expression "front page news," since newspapers will be a thing of the past?  Also, how long will it take for people to stop tapping their wrists to indicate anything related to time, since watches are phasing out?  Hmmmm.]

5.  My husband and I are flying across the country at 6 a.m. tomorrow and will be gone for ten days.  Hooray for holiday travels!

Considering that fleas are taking over our whole house, our dog is injured, the basement is screwed, and someone we care about is preparing to do herself in, this doesn't feel like the right time to be packing up and leaving.  But that's exactly what we're doing!  Oh, and wrapping Christmas presents!  I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone.

And I'm not allowed to drink.  So right now I'm drinking peppermint tea.  It's...well, it's pretty meh.  I know people say tea is supposed to be calming, but I must admit that, compared to my preferred beverages (such as coffee & tequila), tea is bullshit.

  
Yes, much like Mike Tyson.  What a douche bag.