While the Husband is Away, the Wife Will....

5:30 am: Joel leaves to go on a 50 mile run. He'll be gone until at least 10:00 tonight.

9:30 am: I take a look at each boy and decide they might be easier to shape up than it will be to put away the laundry. They each come to the 47 degree garage in pj pants and sit on a cooler. I turn on the "professional" clippers and think, "How hard can this be? Really..." The answer is, it's not hard to cut hair. It is very hard to make hair look good. My best description is: put a wild animal on top of each child's hair. Let them chew on the hair for 5-7 minutes. Take wild animal off. Have child shower. Yes, that's the look we have.

12:45 pm: Coach Levi's soccer team. All was well until #12 on the other team, smiling, injures three of my players, Levi twice. Suddenly, I find myself yelling, as most professional soccer coaches and believers in Christ would...."HEY!"

The game stopped. I'm on my own private island of shrillness. "Ummmm. Him, #12. He's hurting other kids. A lot." I had more pairs of eyes fixed on me than at any other point in my history. "Ok, then," says the other coach. "Cougars throw in?" I don't know what I was expecting: "Yes, you're right Coach Button. Never been a better call."

2:00 pm: I'm home, decided to run the dishwasher. Decided to use my new little soap packet that I picked up for free at a running expo. It's marked "Dish Soap." I squeezed it into the dishwasher. Twenty minutes later, there are bubbles on my floor. There are bubbles filling the dishwasher. I re-read the little free packet. No warning label. Just a stick figure lady admiring her wine glass as she holds a towel.

I had nothing to admire. The basil smell that sounded good in print was not as attractive when it was a basil film covering every one of my dishes. So, if you're ever tempted, at Target, to buy the Meyer's Dish Soap, I would say don't bother. Don't spend the extra money. It may look good but who has ever actually longed for basil-milk, basil-juice, basil-macaroni and cheese, basil-apples, basil-waffles and basil-coffee?

I did wash our bath mats today. For some reason, that feels like a bigger accomplishment than it actually is but I'm holding out there nonetheless. A day like this needs a trophy and here are my bath mats to do the honors.