I am Mom with the Cast Iron Stomach. I got to thinking about sick cats (RIP Jasper) & Virginia Woolf, who complained in a letter once that the business of life (she was buying and taking delivery on a new bed) could ruin days and days of creative work.

Between Saturday and Monday, we had, here in the homestead, a clog in the kitchen sink that had to be opened a few feet from the main drain to let out a stew of 2 week old strangely fibrous chicken parts and Liquid Plumber; a disposer jam from a largish brass screw; a toilet clog that flooded the bathroom; a really largish bursting sebaceous cyst on the guinea pig, which we helped drain and doctor; an entire four-pack of defective light bulbs misleading us into electrical investigations of the bathroom wiring; and a child with a stomach virus. All this involved lots of the wrong tools, plenty of first aid supplies, hand dishwashing and at least 2 ½ extra loads of laundry (above the usual Sunday five).

Woolf didn’t even have a day job or kids. What a wuss.

How did I feel after all this? I felt a sense of accomplishment. I may not have created something, but I kept things from falling apart, as everyone knows they have a tendency to do (see above).

Yesterday the kids’ after school teacher laughed and laughed because my two tend to go around perpetually trailing school papers, important notes, library books, hats, gloves, coats, sweaters, backpacks, art projects, and everything else they own. I usually spend fifteen frantic minutes in the morning finding all that stuff for them, so I agreed with her. They didn’t get it from me, I said.

But maybe they did. Perhaps we do have more than normal amounts of chaos. And maybe it comes from me. I don’t think so, though.