Yesterday's theme of the day was, "No. That did NOT just happen." And yet, somehow, it did.

First there was the weirdness of the fact that my dad packed a bag and headed off on a weekend away with his girlfriend. Allow the 12-year-old in me to indulge in a long, satisfying "EEEEEeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwww." Because I'm happy for him, blah blah blah, but that's just gross. At least he admits it. Before he left yesterday, he made a comment about, "You know, this whole weekend thing is just weirding me out." And I reminded him, "Yeah... welcome to my club. Is YOUR father going on a weekend date? Huh? That's what I thought."

I cannot speak of it without wrinkling my nose. I'm going to strain a nose muscle one of these days.

Then there was my $#@^%$^@$^$#$#@%#@^%^ computer. I'd gone grocery shopping with Jacob, came back, got him fed and down for a nap, put all the groceries away, including separating and freezing the meat and sorting the kids' snacks and other domestic adventures, blah blah blah, and around 2:30 I was able to sit down for a while. I got a show lined up on the DVD, got a soda, and was ready to check my email and just hang out for a bit.

Until.

I happened to notice the little yellow shield thingy down in the taskbar on my computer, telling me that I had updates to install. So I checked what they were, and it was some sort of security update. Okay, so I'll let it do its thing. Then it told me to reboot, so I said, "Sure, go for it!" Idiot.

It corrupted some key, crucial boot file for my computer, so now I can watch an endless loop of the initial logo screen and then a black screen with a really tiny and fast message that says "NTDETECT FAILED." Over and over and over. Can you HEAR the bliss simply oozing out of my pores?

No amount of tinkering or swearing or whining made it work at all. I was even ready to use the Omnipotent White CD to reformat the hard drive and start from scratch, to no avail. So I need to ship my brand-new (I bought it in September!!) big metallic paperweight back to the factory. I was told that "at least it's still under warranty, so THAT's a good thing! Hee hee," and, ungrateful peasant that I am, that wasn't sufficient to lighten my mood.

Neither did sex, or chocolate ice cream with chocolate-peanut butter Magic Shell. Which is a sure sign of just how dire my straits were.

And then, for "That Did NOT Just Happen" #3, after Willem and I went to bed and had reached that just-fell-asleep-2-minutes-ago coma, there was a very clear and distinct knock on our bedroom door. Four knocks, just like from your average door-to-door encyclopedia salesman/serial killer, on my bedroom door at 12:13 in the morning (oh yeah, and on Friday the 13th - fantastic!).

My brave and stalwart husband was willing to hop up to check the hallway and the kids' bedrooms, but then he made me get up (though I was the one who insisted on putting pants on first because I did not want to be beheaded and sacrificed while partially dressed) to help check the rest of the house. Even though right away we noticed a golf ball on the floor by our door and the cat sitting there with a dumbass look on her face. Recently, our going to bed has been a signal to the cat to start batting around whatever is small enough and loud enough to irritate Willem.

So despite clear evidence of the cat's guilt, we checked the house and found no more mass murderers or deranged sexual deviants there than were there before bedtime. And went to sleep.

And I'm really, really hoping for no more unbelievable-yet-somehow-not-surprising incidents today.