One thing led to another tonight. As Dave got home, Sam was spraying down the deck because he’d gotten sand all over it bringing me “apple pie” from his secret garden, water was sprayed into the house (not a lot but a little); Ben was walking around with the swiffer mop, banging it and yelling (happy yells), almost slipping on the water Sam had sprayed in; I was halfway through emptying the dishwasher (I usually do that in the morning) and my laundry was all over the bed, half-folded; the vacuum was in pieces on the deck to change a belt that had broken when Sam was vacuuming a couple weeks ago (I’d been limping along hoping I could get it to work all that time, using the wand on the floors, etc. until I just couldn’t take it any more); and there was a red splat of spit-up that was tinged with bright red frosting from after-commissary lunch-dessert on the carpet, which I was also trying to clean while cooking, wrangling Ben, wiping up the floor, and telling Sam to turn off the hose. So we have dinner and while I’m cleaning Dave finds the backup belt I’d looked for three times today and installed it in the vacuum with Sam helping. He then went to have a nice shower to loosen up his stiff neck but saw a cockroach jump out of the digeridoo, so tried to catch it, missed it, and watched as it scurried up behind the mirror. He came back to tell me about the roach, and as he did the roach divebombed him from the ceiling! So he quickly grabbed the vacuum cleaner and chased it down, running it over to kill it. When I came down the hall, he was spraying 409 on the carpet – in a seeming cleaning-frenzy. I started howling laughing when he told me what’d happened. When I’d heard the vacuum, I’d thought he was being nice, vacuuming the rest of the hallway (he’d down one pass down a 24″ wide hallway, saying he really wasn’t up to doing the rest, which would entail a second pass down the other side). I was like….whooaaa…not up for that? I didn’t say that out loud, but I was laughing inside a bit. You can vacuum our entire house literally without moving the plug. I think one day, perhaps in Heaven, men will realize what we women do all the time – vacuum when we’re hot, sweaty and tired with a child on the hip. Hey Molly – how’d that mommy time-out go? I think I may be due after tonight! It is humid and nasty out! 

Here’s Dave’s summation: “Only in this house could a man come home to fix a vacuum, eat a meager dinner, clean the carpet, chase a roach before he gets a chance to unwind.” OK – this is me trying to remember what he said at the time, but it was funny. I was in a good mood, thankfully, seeing the sweat dripping from his bald head (new haircut) as he relayed the story of the roach dive-bombing him from above just as he was about to shower and recover from fixing the vacuum. Funny irony was he used the very weapon he sort-of resented fixing. Uncle Tim – I SOOOO wanted to call you about this one!