The triumph of hope over experience

Redecorating - the practise of spreading the entire contents of one room among the rooms adjoining, thus making three rooms absolute tips and practically unusable for three times as long as you thought it would take to finish the decorating, not to mention the enormous task of deciding what to replace and what to chuck/store once the job is done. I still can't see my kitchen table for piles of paper and assorted rubbish.
Emptying the attic - filling i) one skip with assorted junk from said attic and other parts of the house ii) one van with a) the cardboard boxes from every item every bought over the last twenty two years, saved just in case we needed to take something back and b) all the electrical appliances that conked out but might come in useful one day then moving boxes and boxes of unread books, ugly ornaments, family keepsakes and other homeless stuff up into the empty space left by the skip and van filling.
Family get-togethers - where one parent is fast losing patience due to above on top of the usual elderly-mother-aggravation, t'otheran is stubbornly attempting tasks beyond the capability of his knackered back then moaning to everyone about it, son comes up to help and brings girlfriend and we all tip-toe politely around the minefield that is their relationship at present and daughter, bless her, is a tower of strength to all.
Last straw - where the sight of two shelves made from i) grubby white mdf and ii) dirty cream painted mdf adorning the newly painted alcove in my beautifully redecorated sitting room is enough to induce pacing, sitting, more pacing, increasingly tearful (and higher pitched) explanations of how far short this effort fell of my expectations (ship/ha'peth of tar sort of thing) and finally total sobbing meltdown. Got me new wooden shelves sharpish though :-)
And if you thought that was bad - on Sunday I stood on a baby. Daughter and I were walking through a restaurant door at 8 o'clock at night and as I crossed the threshold I stood on something lumpy, took another step, looked back and it was a baby that some idiot mother sitting on the far side of the room had let crawl about on the floor! Still don't know which bit I stood on but I don't think s/he was badly hurt. Imagine if I'd been a 17 stone rugby player or a waiter with a sizzling dish?!