Who put me in charge?

The day started off innocently enough. DH and Jacob and I spent the morning working in our garden plot. There are few things that boys like to do more than roll in the dirt, so every Saturday DH and Jacob are in heaven as they wrestle with the elements and get really dirty. But I don't stess--I just pop their muddy clothes in our laundry sink to soak. (This comes into play later, I promise.) Ok, so we finish our garden work, run some errands, and DH goes off to work. Whenever DH works on a Saturday night, I make a fun Mommy and Jacob night by getting a special video at the video store and letting Jacob stay up late snuggled up with Mommy and some sugary treats watching the show. So, we are getting ready to go to the video store, and I spy the mail that DH brought in earlier. On the top of the pile is a notice from Blockbuster saying that since I've not returned the 4 items I've rented this month, and decided to keep them, my VISA will be charged $65.00. What? I returned all those videos weeks ago, and on time. I went ballistic, and showed up at Blockbuster practically raving. The manager assured me all was well, and sent me on my way. In the car on the way home, I get a phone call saying that my car insurance won't cover the crack in our windshield, even though my agent said that it would. This does not improve my mood. We get home, and I start going through the rest of the mail, only to find that a parking ticket DH got and didn't tell me about is now way delinquent and is going to cost us twice as much as the original amount. My mood gets darker. Then some neighbor kids come over, and Jacob is happily occupied while I start working on the aforementioned laundry. I get everything going, go upstairs to start working on the dinner dishes, and I hear an odd splashing noise from the basement. I go downstairs to find Noah's flood! Our washing machine drains into the laundry sink where I had tossed the mud soaked clothes, and a particularly sneaky sock had worked itself down into the drain, blocking all water drainage. This in turn caused the sink to overflow with water and turned my basement into a soapy lake. I grabbed every dirty towel I could find, and spent the next 15-20 minutes frantically mopping up water that threatened DH's law books he had stored down there (and in our family, nobody messes with DH's books). My cleaning effort meant that the 2 three year olds and the 4 year old in the house went unsupervised and out of ear shot for at least 20 minutes. (You see it coming, don't you?) So Jacob came down sometime later, holding the lid to some FABRIC PAINT left over from who knows what unfinished Relief Society project left somewhere for who knows how long, but clearly it was no longer out of his reach. I ran up to inspect his room, and sure enough, found enough red paint spread around you would have thought somebody had killed a small animal. The 4 year old, being slightly wiser and astute at reading parental moods, thought fast and said, "C'mon, guys, let's go outside--Jacob, get your rain boots!" and made a mad dash downstairs and outside before any swift retribution could befall him. Jacob quickly followed suit and grabbed his rain boots. "Wait, there's something here," he said, and turned one boot upside down, spilling about a thousand Bingo chips he had apparantly put there for safe keeping all over my hallway. I was rendered speechless. Then I thought, "Hey, why am I in charge? Whose lousy idea was THAT? Car insurance, credit cards, parking tickets, flooding basements, war paint on the bedspread-I wanted to grow up to do THIS?" And why no warning? The closest anybody ever came to giving me a glimpse of what to expect as an adult and a mother was my father who once said, "Life sometimes gets a little complicated." Complicated? That's it? You call a flooding basement and a red-painted child COMPLICATED? I can think of a lot of other things I'd like to call it, none of which I can write because this is officially a Mormon blog and Mormons aren't supposed to use that kind of language. Maybe our mothers had it easier. I remember one time I had to dig Play-Doh out of Jacob's nose with a toothpick, and I called my mother to complain that she never told me motherhood would involve stuff like this. She calmly said, "Well,my dear, you never stuck Play-Doh up your nose." I'd like to know when things are going to get less complicated. Sadly, I don't think it's soon. I think I need a Chantico. Anybody want to join me?