Don't Count

When my youngest brother was born it was in the dark ages when mothers got to stay in the hospital for ten days or so (it was also in Canada). One day Mom called home and got the middle child, who was not quite 3, and he told her she couldn't talk to Daddy, he was sleeping. Then he hung up.

A few minutes later my father called her right back and explained. He was not sleeping. He was doing a complex math problem. You see, one thing that always bothered him about my mother's housekeeping was the fact that she did nto keep the back doorjamb clear of finger prints. He thought that was slovenly and slacking. So he determined to keep it clean in order to prove how easy it was.

About the fifty-billionth finger print he wiped off that hour, he took to the couch with an ice-pack to calculate just how many little muddy finger prints clutched that doorjamb every single hour. I may be exaggerating about the ice-pack. Between my brother and I we had the full 20 fingers complete with prints. We went in and out that door X number of times in an hour, there were six hours of the day we could go in and out- and about that time he was on the couch groaning, my 2 year old brother was answering the phone, and I, well, I don't know where my 5 and 3/4 of a year old self was. Probably surreptitiously adding a few muddy foot prints to the door just to make life more interesting.

I once thought it seemed to good to add up how many years I'd had a child in diapers. And then I thought it seemed better to forget it right away.

Currently I am calculating how many servings of food we dish out each month and I'm already at over 300 for this month alone.

And today the HG came in and said, "Do you realize we have had houseguests for three straight weeks?"

INcidentally, that does NOT count our summer resident, the Tea Chemist. She's no longer a houseguest. The Boy says she's a Gumly- part guest and part family (the guest part is we don't make her share her bathroom most of the time, and she never has to give up a bed). She bakes, and we will hate to give her up.

Anyway, the three weeks of houseguests include Blynken and Nod, Stryder, the Chem Grad (NOT the same as the Tea Chemist), three out of state friends from my birth state of Arkansas, and a family of three who came up for a birthday bash and spent the night. In one case within hours of one set leaving the new set arrives?

Asked the HG, "So. Do you think that might explain the steam-rolled feeling we all have?"

It might. It just very well might.