When Aidan wasn't even a glint in his father's eye and our third son, Justin, was just a baby, we lived in a cute townhouse in New Jersey. The people who had lived there before us had turned half of the garage into a storage room. I was more than happy to make it into a playroom for my boys. The playroom was right off the laundry room and I was a little concerned about the exposed water line coming from the laundry room, but I wasn't about to give up the chance to have a place for all of their toys. The water line was right at their level and they loved to hang on it like little monkeys. The hose looked sturdy enough to me, so even though I told them not to hang on it anymore, I wasn't consistent with my orders. I came to regret that. As I'm doing chores around the house one day, all of a sudden I hear a sound of rushing water and yelling from the playroom. I run to the doorway and stare in shock at what I am seeing. The playroom floor was quickly being flooded by the gushing amount of Niagra Falls while Nathanael bravely grabbed Caleb around the waist and ran for the door. I grabbed the phone because my household knowledge only went so far during that time in my life and I had to ask my husband for the location of the valve to shut off the water. So much for girl power. Somehow he was able to discern what happened even though I was practically stuttering in my panicked state. It was something like, "Oh, my gosh! The boys....water line....gushing...." The poor guy is in the middle of his office surrounded by co-workers and his little wifie is yelling into the phone about a broken water line. He calmly acts as if nothing crazy is happening on the other end and tells me where to look. As soon as I find it, I turn the water off and immediately felt relief from having stopped Lake Erie from forming in our playroom. In the silence of the room, I sheepishly smile into the phone and say, "Hee, um, thanks, honey." He answers in his typical, "Mmm-hmmm", and as we hung up I realized that it made me feel better to call the previous owners idiots for putting in an exposed water line instead of myself for actually letting the boys hang on it.
Doc and I have actually been tweeking with the idea of going on a date. I know. Totally weird. Not the idea of doing something romantic. It's the idea that we actually might have the guts to dump our offspring on some unsuspecting person. This has always been a hard decision for us to make. I mean, we do watch the news and let's face it, we're paranoid. That's probably why we haven't been on a real date that didn't include scarfing down our food as fast as we can and running back home to see if it's still standing and no one is bleeding. Just the other day, I asked Doc, "So, are we going out for Chinese tonight?" I was crossing my fingers mentally, chewing on my lip. I so wanted to be irresponsible. We haven't been on a date in forever and I was craving Chinese like crazy. I suggested that our 13-year-old son get a chance to hold down the fort for a couple hours. I even turned on my sexy voice and said, "We'll have our cell phone with ...
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