Raking the floor on a Sunday afternoon

I was born without the gene every other woman in the world has in spades. The shopping gene. I hate to shop.

I spent nine hours yesterday shopping. With three kids. On the weekend before school starts.

Shopping sucks even when the stores are clear, I have plenty of money, and everything is on sale 90 percent off. Yesterday was... not my favorite. And Mike the Migraine went with us. It was great.

Today I decided my kids should start the school year off with a clean room. Not bandaid clean like they do it, but deep clean like I do it.

Have you ever noticed how a house collects things? Stuff just piles up until it starts to take over. You can plow through and get rid of tons of junk and think your done. But six months later the piles are back.

My house is a garbage man's dream.

In the kids' room I made it through the closet and under one bed - filling two huge garbage bags -before I quit. I had to rake the floor under Joseph's bed to get everything out from under it. I couldn't even face Katie and Savannah's. What we can't see can't hurt us, right?

Savannah was thrilled. She told Sean Austin, "You've got to see this! We can run in our room!"

Now I just need to hit the other eight rooms and we'll be back on track, figuratively speaking.

For about six months anyway.