The morning starts out so well that you have no idea that it's all going go to pot within the next few hours. You get up as usual and grab you mug of coffee before going out to the deck to sit back and enjoy the early morning peace. Idly you leaf through the home improvement catalog that came in the mail yesterday and which was left on the table. When the phone call comes you have no idea that your world will very shortly be turned upside down on its face and that you're going to be stressed once again in your life.

Your partner comes outside to join you with a sheepish smile on his face. He then proceeds to give you the bad news. His parents have finally decided to take a vacation from their extended vacation traveling the globe and they'll be stopping by on their way home, for a few days only, but they definitely will be coming and sometime after next week.

You grip the home improvement catalog as it's your lifeline and paste a bright smile on your face. All you can do is think of all the house work which you had let slide for the past few months. Everything had probably accumulated to the point of your dust bunnies having little dust bunnies of their own. It wasn't that you didn't like your mother-in-law, or that she didn't like you, it was just that she had never thought you were good enough for her precious baby and made no bones about showing it to you.

However, that was neither here nor there as what really mattered now was getting the house into some semblance of order before they arrived next week. Sometime next week to be exact. Your gaze falls to the home improvement catalog which you've all but torn in your hands and almost fall over yourself when it finally registers what you have in your hand.

A snippet of an article you had seen in the home improvement catalog comes back to you and you start flipping madly through the pages to find it. You know you're really far gone when an absurd relief flows through you when you finally find it, but that's just how it is.

Clutching the home improvement catalog to you, you marshal your forces and go about following almost to the letter the home improvement tips and tricks which will get you through your period of stress. And this then is why home improvement catalogs were created to begin with and you have a subscription. To think, you were almost on the verge of canceling it too, thinking you didn't really need it!