We get bad luck out of the way before Friday the 13th

It isn't until the police officer taking my crime report asks why the overhead garage door happened to be left open that I piece together just how lousy this week has been.

It all starts with the weather.

I can't remember if it is sleeting or merely pouring rain when, in a frantic effort to escape the downpour, one of our kids uses a little too much torque in unlocking the garage, snapping off the key in the deadbolt lock. Thankfully, he had managed to unlock the door before breaking the key. Even after I find my needlenose pliers that I have been saving for just such an emergency, I can't pull the key remnant from the lock.

The door still locks from the inside, which proves OK, because, with the backyard flooded from another record rain, we can't walk to the garage straight from the house without losing a shoe in the mud. So, for the rest of the week, I grab the extra garage door opener, walk through the alley and open the overhead door to reach my car.

I walk through the alley when I arrive home in time to help my wife with our basement, which floods for the second time this month. Rain seeps under the wall to soak a corner where we had installed new carpet the week before. I had failed to convince my wife during the carpet installation that we should stop the carpet a foot before the potentially leaky wall, just in case. I don't mention that detail, but my wife wails, "You were right. I was wrong," which are words I need to remember so I can use them the next night.

We pry up the carpet, throw away the pad and use fans and a dehumidifier to dry out the place.

I get home the next night to discover that the new toilet on the first floor is clogged. My wife suggests I run upstairs to get the plunger. But not wanting to make a mess, I am determined to let gravity do the work. I flush the toilet, let it fill to the rim and jiggle the handle.

Confident the toilet will unclog itself given time, I leave to help my wife research "cleaning flood-damaged carpet" on the Internet. As toilet water gently rolls over the new maple floor in our kitchen, I realize my jiggle of the handle failed to stop the water from flowing into and out of the stopped-up toilet.

I would have heard the water cascading through the new light fixtures in the new ceiling of our new basement and onto the new carpet (the part not damaged by the previous night's regular old flood) if not for our noisy old dehumidifier and fans.

My wife silently remembers that she suggested not 5 minutes ago that I just plunge away the problem, and I wail, "You were right. I was wrong," as I carry towels to the basement. In an attempt to dry the light fixtures and drywall, I cut a hole in our new ceiling to accommodate a fan that had been drying the carpet.

I think the staying up until 1:30 a.m. mopping toilet water on the heels of a late night dealing with the other flood is the reason I crash at 9 p.m. the next night. My wife stays up to wash the towels used during previous floods, and clean the clutter created by all the chaos.

So I am deep asleep when one of our sons nudges me at 11:30 p.m. and calmly says, "Mom wants you. She's in the basement. Something about a can of spray paint."

My wife, exhausted, had picked up a wayward pillow and tossed it down our new basement stairs. During its flight, the pillow gently nudged a can of black spray paint sitting on a shelf at the top of the stairs. The paint can fell to the bottom step, where, the "contents under pressure" forced a small hole in the can.

My wife, curious about the strange "psst" sound coming from the basement finds the ruptured can spewing black paint everywhere. She grabs the pillow and, sacrificing her body and sweatshirt, jumps on the paint can. Hugging the spraying can to her chest she heaves the hissing bomb into the yard where it wears itself out spraying the new siding and back porch.

My wife knows I am the one who left the can sitting out. I know she is the one who knocked it down the stairs. We (who celebrate our 21st anniversary this month) both know now is the time to let those observations slide. So we are up until 1:30 a.m. again, cleaning black paint off the new stairs, new carpet, new porch and new siding.

We are too tired to notice we accidentally leave the overhead garage door open and some thief helps himself to one of the bikes my wife and I got as a wedding present, which is why the police officer in the opening paragraph is at our house.

As I write this on Friday the 13th, our basement is dry, the paint is mostly cleaned up, my wife is warming to the idea of a new bike, life is good and we are preparing for tonight, when our 13-year-old twins are hosting a sleepover with 13 boys in our basement, which I'm confident will be an uneventful, sleep-filled night for my wife and me.

In a world with horrific accidents, devastating illnesses, crippling poverty and life-altering unemployment, I'm thankful we used up our week's allotment of bad luck on the small stuff.