It’s one thing to have a plan for dinner, and quite another to execute it.

While the kids were playing at the neighbor’s house, I began excavation work in the girls’ bedroom.  I swear I did this only a month ago, but I must have only done a partial job.  Under the bed, under the dresser, in the dresser drawers, in the closet, between the beds and the wall…was so much stuff.  Mostly, it was artwork.  Yes, I need to go in, collect my children’s creative efforts, and throw them away.  There is no way they would do this by themselves: that tissue box full of “ghosts” is art (art explains why nobody can blow her nose on anything except toilet tissue); those Christmas cards that came in the mail and were cut up into a bazillion pieces is art; the hundreds of sheets of paper folded into the smallest shape possible is art.

I also found 5 pairs of scissors in the room, three of which were mine.  And there were more pens, pencils, crayons and markers than would fit inside an ordinary pen case.  I found Katie’s new red shirt that had been missing.  And ballet shoes for Jenny who last week wore a pair two sizes too big. 

Friday is ballet night, and I was not done with my work before I had to call the girls home to get ready.  I hid evidence of my work by putting the trash bag in my room.  The pile of stuff removed from the closet floor piled into the middle of the bedroom merely looked like their normal setup.  My neighbor’s daughters are in the same ballet class, and she was driving, so I went back to work after they left. 

Normally, I make dinner at this time (530 pm), but I was a woman on a mission.  I kept thinking I’d be done soon, but then I would find another cache.  By the time 630 rolled around, I had managed to do everything except put fresh sheets on Katie’s bed, the top bunk.  I was very pleased with my work, but it came at the expense of preparing dinner.

What to do?  Pizza?  PB&J?  A late meal?  I’ll continue with what happened after ballet in another post.