........that you shouldn't get you hopes up about a day in which you have nothing planned.......because there are no free days when you're a mom.

You might have initially felt a gloomy, rainy Monday the perfect backdrop for accomplishing nothing more than staying in and doing well, nothing. But let me tell you, it's a lost cause. Before you know it you will find yourself chasing a snot-nosed 20 month old around the house, trying in vain to convince her boogies are, number one, not hysterically funny and number two, not a good thing to smear across furniture. Then you will find yourself scrubbing poop stains off the velour toddler outfit that never got dealt with yesterday. The one that your husband actually had to look at, pick up and move so he could get ready for bed the night before. And as you are about to rinse said outfit, in the bathtub you were on your hands and knees scrubbing out not even one week ago, you are treated to the view of a brand new layer of slime and grime and your husbands hair. So leaving the velour outfit for later and the pile of laundry you've previously gathered, you dive right in and begin to, once again, rinse out the tub. But the drain, as you have mentioned to your husband, is quite slow. Soon the tub is filled with not only slime and grime and hair, but a good deal of tepid water. And it is at this moment that your oh so helpful daughter knocks an entire basket of clean folded towels, and her poopy velour outfit, into the stew. You exclaim something along the lines of "Noooooooooo!", which scares her and triggers a torrent of tears. You leave off everything, this time, in favor of comforting her. And if you really had any sense at all it is at this moment that you would admit defeat and abandon the whole mess, leaving it for you husband to take care of when he gets home.

But, of course you don't. Because, by golly, this is your day to do nothing! And you're anxious to start. So you throw in a load of laundry, ring out and hang to drip dry the towels that fell into the bath tub, put the poopy outfit into a bucket of soapy water to soak, add more water and bleach, to the still un-drained bathtub, finish the batch of pumpkin muffins you foolishly undertook somewhere before all this, feed your daughter her belated breakfast and in between each activity, wipe, wipe, wipe her running nose.

By now, it is 11:00. Which, when you realize it, begs you to ask one all important question; what are you going to do with all the time you have left before your parents arrive for lunch?