House-sitting: OR Why My Neighbors are Awesome

So my next door neighbors went to go visit family over Christmas and asked me if I would house/dog-sit for them.  I've done this on occasions before and of course I said yes.  Aside from getting to stay in their awesome house and play with their dog, they were paying me well.  Bonus.

My goals here are simple: keep the dog alive and the house standing.  Easy peesy.

And it was easy peesy.  Until 2 days before they came home.  It was that morning that I was going down to the laundry room to get the dog's water bowl to fill up, and then this happened:

Image borrowed from http://www.explodingdog.com/ via Google search

Except imagine that instead of another person, it's the dog looking at me from the top of the staircase.  And really, it wasn't TOO big a deal because I was fine, just a rug burn, and it was only like 5 steps that I fell down (its a short staircase), but then THIS happened:

On my totally graceful fall down the stairs I managed to smack into the picture on the wall, which brought it down with me.  Awesome.  I was supposed to make sure everything was ok while they were out of town, and so what do I do?  I break their stuff.  I mean it was an accident, but still.  So yeah, I freaked out and was in a panic about getting it out of the way and fixed before they got home.

I take the cracked picture to our hardware store, since they do glass replacement, and I'm all, "Can you fix this?"  And the guy says, "Yup!  No problem."  "Cool, well can I get it by Wednesday morning?"  "Oh sure, we'll have it done tomorrow.  We'll give you a call when it's ready."  "Yay!  Ok thank you!"  And I leave happy that this should be all repaired and no one will be the wiser.  This on Monday.

Tuesday, I don't hear anything from them.  So Wednesday morning at like 11, I go in to pick it up.  My neighbors are currently in the air very quickly approaching and I've got about 2 hours before they come in the door.  So I walk in and.....I see the still broken picture laying on the counter where it was left on Monday.  I ask about it.  The guy who was there who happened to be the owner tells me, "Oh I'm really sorry about that, my son (whom I spoke with on Monday) just told me about this this morning.  I'll have it done for you within the hour and give you a call."  Ok ok...so I leave again and wait.  And wait.  And wait.  Nothing.  My neighbors call and say they should be home in half an hour and I just realized I'm going to be forced to tell them that I'm a dork and broke their stuff.

Lo and behold, they arrive and I'm all "Welcome home!.....you may notice something missing...." and proceed to tell them what happened.  Being the awesome people that they are, they laughed and said not to worry about it, and that they'd pay for it just let them know.  I didn't even get a call that it was done until the NEXT DAY....and they didn't even replace the wire that had broken on the back.  So when I took it over to return it (which I totally picked up and paid for regardless of what they told me...it's not their fault I'm clumsy), I'm like, "Here's your picture that I broke and the wire is still broken so it's not even really fixed and I fail don't hate me."  It pretty much came out like that too, only more as one word instead of a run-on sentence.  They still laughed and said it was totally fine and not to worry.  I'm very lucky I have forgiving neighbors.

And that my friends, is the story of my house-sitting adventure.