All I wanted to do was bake some cookies. (This story is ridiculous.)

While most people can't say that a faucet malfunction in the kitchen could mar any sort of baking episode, of course in my house it would cause utter mayhem.

This day has been anything but a typical Saturday. I was done with my weekly grocery shopping by 9:30a, but had an extremely difficult time getting to and from the store on the slick and unplowed roads. By 10:30a, we were on our way down I-69 to a tiny town 15 miles away to meet some good friends for morning coffee. The trip turned out to be harrowing. The interstate had not been plowed worth anything. Only one of the two lanes were navigable and traffic was moving slowly because of the oftentimes 1/4 mile visibility. At one point, we skidded into the other lane to avoid the stopped lane(s) of traffic that we found over a hill and around a corner (with the shortest visibility, at that point, that we'd had). We made it to our coffee date and had a fantastic time catching up.

But when we left, 2 1/2 hours later, there was at least 5-6 inches of snow on the ground. Plows had been through once, probably, during our chat. I needed to do some research at a nearby mall, so we manned the country highways that direction, only to discover 6-inch deep mounds between the road lanes, and high piles between the wheels as well.

By the time we got home, we were exhausted and ready to eat some lunch (it was 3p) and bake some cookies for our Super Bowl get together tomorrow. However, the town roads of Upland had not been plowed at all. We got stuck in the street outside our driveway and had to finagle our way into the drive of the woman across the street just to turn around. See, we had intended to buy a shovel while in Muncie, but had forgotten. Our shovel busted in a billion pieces during the ice storm when Kyle was trying to dig our cars out after the blizzard on Wednesday. We managed to get the car through drift after drift to a local hardware store where he bought a ridiculously expensive metal shovel (harder to bust than the plastic we had before).

Parking in our neighbor's drive again, Kyle began shoveling while I went inside to get some food ready (it was nearing 4p and we still hadn't had lunch). In the next 1.5 hours that we took turns shoveling, scraping my car, eating, and such, a city plow did come through and plow our road, only to reveal an ice skating rink under the snow on the road. This is not an exaggeration. It looks like you're walking on frozen Lake Manitou, and it's just the street. (Kyle only wiped out once, and that was actually in the driveway on the 5-inch ice layer that separates our feet from the pavement.)

After resting and letting our minds wander for a bit, I decided to get into the cookies. Once we got them mixed up, the batter needed to chill for an hour, so we put it in the fridge and began cleaning up, etc. Here's where the evil kitchen faucet comes into play. But first, two items of necessary background information:

1) The lighting in the kitchen is so poor that I often bring our tall, plastic 3-way light around the corner from the living room so as to give more light. This evening was no exception from that. It was next to the doorway about 10 feet away from the sink.

2) Our kitchen sprayer has been malfunctioning off and on for months. I never know when this is going to happen.

Tonight, I was cleaning off a dish and the sprayer got stuck, as usual. By "got stuck" I mean it wouldn't shut off. No matter how much jiggling, twisting, increasing of the water pressure (which usually helps), the stupid thing just would not let up.

I called Kyle in to help, since he is handy with this sort of thing. As he attempted to increase the water pressure in the faucet, he lost control of the hose and water hit our faces, shirts, the ceiling, the opposite wall, the stove, the kitchen table; water was spraying everywhere. I had backed up to the kitchen door, confused, only to be startled by a loud *Pop! right next to me. There was a flash of light and the lamp that I'd brought in from the living room spewed light bulb chunks and shards into the air and then fizzled out. Glass rained down on me, on the table, on the floor, again everywhere. The cat about had a heart attack, at the same time I was having one, and Kyle spun around after turning off the water with a "What just happened?!"

All I wanted was to bake some cookies today. That's it. And instead, look at what the day did to me!

We had to lock the kitty in a back room and as I crawled on my hands and knees picking up glass pieces and drying off the sopping floor, Kyle followed in my wake with the vacuum cleaner. Thirty minutes later, we were exhausted and forgot about the cookies.

I'm ready for bed.