Things I Did Not Factor Into My New Housework Schedule

• Time for tracking down the cause of the nasty smell coming from the heating vents.

• Time for removing nasty-smelling dead rat from under house.

• Dead! Rat!

• Time for addressing and mailing the Christmas cards I was so proud I managed to order early.

• Time for multiple doctors’ appointments for multiple children with respiratory infections.

• Time for extra laundry generated by baby’s abhorrence of antibiotic. (As in: my laundry. Amoxicillin spatter? Not my best look.)

• Time for dealing with horrific aftermath of three-year-old’s antibiotic-induced gastro-intestinal distress. (He had poop on his eyebrows; need I say more?)

• Time for eight frantic phone calls to eight online vendors in order to correct colossally stupid mistake involving credit card number. (Tip: when carrying out your brilliant plan to cut and paste your credit card number from a desktop sticky into various online order forms, MAKE SURE YOU ARE PASTING THE CORRECT NUMBER, AS IN THE ONE WITHOUT THE TYPO. Especially if you want the gifts to arrive before Christmas.)

• Time for calling the DMV to find out what happened to the driver’s license they were supposed to have mailed me a month ago.

• Time to snark to various friends about how the DMV promised to look into it and call me back, uh huh, yeah right.

• Time to eat crow when the DMV actually DID call me back. With an apology, no less!

• Time to make series of phone calls from the grocery story in search of the ingredient list for the recipe I specifically went to the store to shop for, but whose ingredients I forgot to check before I  left home.

• Time to scold bored and impatient children for rowdy behavior in grocery store while mom is on phone.

• Time to humbly accept compliments from no less than three elderly strangers on excellent behavior of children in grocery store.

• Time to wonder whose assessment of children’s behavior was correct, mine or elderly strangers.

• Time to break down large quantity of cardboard boxes which arrived containing Christmas presents.

• Time to finish breaking down large quantity of cardboard boxes leftover from cross-country move.

• Time to supervise massive cleanup of daughters’ closet, which can’t possibly have needed cleaning out yet since it was only moved into two months ago.

• And yet, it did.

• Time to watch various funny, gorgeous, or nightmarish video clips forwarded by husband who was forced to kill time while office maintenance men stood on ladder next to his desk repairing air-conditioning system for the whole floor.

• Time to write a long list of the things I forgot to allow time for.