I am cursed when it comes to gatherings. No, really. I thought I had shrugged off my party curse a few weeks ago when I had a successful gathering of a few friends for my birthday. But no, apparently that was a fluke. I have had a string of failed parties and gatherings with my friends, but I think that the latest is by far the best story.

You see, we have had this little problem all winter. Our front door has been waterlogged and is slowly warping. It has gotten to the point now where we can not open the front door and we have to walk around the side of the house and go in and out of the back door. We had it fixed once by having it planed down on one side, but apparently that just gave it more room to warp. The handyman doesn't have time to fix it this week, so I was just going to have my friends who are coming over tomorrow go in and out the back door.

So... yesterday, the boy went around the side of the house with the brick path that goes all the way to the front. He noticed that there was some paper on the path - maybe a newspaper that had disintigrated in the rain. He pointed it out to me, and something about it looked really familiar, but I just couldn't place it. Anyway, he shoveled it up and put it in the trash. This evening, I noticed that there appeared to be more of it, which was strange since we had cleaned it up. And then it hit me. It looked just like Seneca Ave. did the time that the sewage pipe burst outside of the hospital where I used to work. I had the boy stand outside near where the bathroom is and watch the ground as I flushed the toilet. Sure enough, water bubbled out of the ground and down the path. Disgusting.

What really sucks is that I was finally going to have a group of friends over tomorrow night. Hardly anyone has seen our house since we moved in and I was really looking forward to it. We cleaned, we painted, and the house looks so good right now. I think that if the front door weren't stuck and I didn't have to have my friends walk through a sewage field to get in the house, I wouldn't have cancelled the gathering. I just would have hoped that no one had to use the bathroom while they were here and quietly shoveled up the mess the next day. I know, that's gross, but damn it, I was really looking forward to some company.

There's always next time.