I love my new chair.

You see, I’ve had this chair for over a month, what with it’s over sized gloriousness and pseudo-suede stain-repellent fabric, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I was able to enjoy it. Actually, it wasn’t until yesterday until I was able to even sit on it. Yes, as trite as it sounds, I’ve been *THAT* busy. But sit on it I did, yesterday afternoon, with Lila Belle acting uncharacteristically good, sitting on my lap and only biting me ten times a minute vs. her usual fourteen. The house was clean, even after the party o’ fabulousness, the errands had all been run, I had slept in until 10:30 (a magical feat in itself) and I had even showered. It was a Sunday, I had nothing to do, and life was content in my big red chair.

And then there’s today.

Mondays are never fun – something always goes awry, whether it’s realizing that I overdrafted my checking account by splurging on that round of shots over the weekend or just having the typical “why am I at work and not sleeping” slump that can happen. But today – well, it started off innocently enough, yet by 8am, Murphy had come for a visit.

I woke up at the semi-typical 6:30 to Lila Belle announcing that her bladder was calling; I let her out, pretended to go back to sleep but finally sucked it up and took her for a walk. Since Lila is a dog not aversive to the fun that red Georgia mud can bring, I decided that she was in need of a bath before I partook of the shower. And that’s where it began.

Lila isn’t a fan of the bath; ok, Lila HATES it. I have to literally lock her in the bathroom and hose her down while she tries to bite, scratch and claw me. She’s very creative in her methods of torture. After 10 minutes of torrential puppy-shaking wetness (with a little all-natural herbal puppy shampoo to boot) Lila was clean…and then she managed to run around the house, slipping and sliding and running into doors with her wet little curly self. Lila was a dog possessed. Lila was ALSO a dog who needed to spend some QT with herself in her puppy crate while I tended to my own getting-readyness.

So I showered. No detail necessary there.

Post-shower, I realized I needed to brush one of the cats, but – as is the case nearly every day – the cat brush was missing. (I assume it’s in the black hole o’ Aubrey things that still have yet to be discovered, cavorting with my nail polish, eyelash curler, tweezers and iPod mini somewhere in the house.) So, instead, I used this comb I had back when Sebastian was a kitten; it’s actually a flea comb but works well to get out Samantha’s long-cat-hair matts. So I’m combing, and combing, and – huh. What was that? That little black thing? It kinda looks like….

OH NO IT ISN’T.

(But it is.)

A flea.

Well, in the land of the Sabala menagerie, a flea is an indicator of something more, something much, much worse. After all, there’s never an isolated flea, and with three (yes, I admit it, I’m a virtual spinster) cats and a dog, a flea ushers in Crisis Management: INFESTATION procedures. Yes, one flea means many fleas on many animals who sit ALL OVER THE HOUSE. Including my bed. Shoot me now.

After further inspection, the worst was found to be true. Sebastian, Sullivan, Samantha AND Lila Belle all have fleas. That’s FOUR ANIMALS, sitting on EVERY SURFACE of my house, with fleas.

Really, shoot me now.

I didn’t think there could be an insect that I hated more than ants; oh, but I was wrong. There’s something about the little ones, those creepy crawly little things that hide themselves in their meager size, and just make my skin crawl. And while the animals haven’t shown a symptom (there’s been no scratching or itching on ANY of them), I, on the other hand, am now suffering from first-degree psychosomatic skin itchiness. I swear, any errant hair falling on my arm sends me into a tailspin of scratching.

To add insult to injury, Lila absconded my lavender scented eye pillow, and after no less than 10 minutes (!!) of chasing her around and around the coffee table (a game I could see going on ad infinitum) I finally ripped it out of her mouth – only to have the silk fabric rip, sending lavender seeds flying like a virtual fountain ALL OVER THE LIVING ROOM.

Then the toilet overflowed.

Then I stepped in dog pee.

I looked at my watch…7:56am. Looks like Murphy’s Law has hit La Casa Sabala with a vengeance, providing retribution from a nice, relaxing Sunday spent cooking and finally watching the TiVo’d Alias and Gray’s Anatomy finales.

Seriously, it has to get better.

Doesn’t it??