It was a rough weekend. The culminating moment came when a little birdie informed me that there was water pouring from the sink onto the floor in the shared bathroom. We were mere moments away from leaving the house for an hour or two to attend a Power Team performance at an area church. (The Power Team is a ministry of athletes/weight lifters who do amazing feats of strength with a message.)

When I walked into the bathroom, there was about a half-inch of water on the floor already and a cascade trickling down the three drawers next to the sink like a waterfall. I lost count of how many towels I laid on the floor to try to sop up the worst of it before my mom arrived a few minutes later with a wet/dry vac in tow.

She approached the situation much more calmly than I felt. I was frazzled, angry and exhausted. “Not Me” had struck again, and this time, it wasn’t just marker on the closet shelf, candy wrappers hidden under the couch or too much toilet paper in the commode. After we vacuumed out the under-vanity drawers and got the floor as dry as possible, I barked at the boys – still not knowing who the culprit was – and sent them to separate rooms of the house until the interrogation could commence.

Then, I had a pity party … a complete I-don’t-think-I-can-do-this blubbering mess. All of the until-now little things that had transpired over the past several days landed on my shoulders in one heaping lump, and I folded. I wanted Lane home, and I wanted him home NOW. I wanted Nathan back, and I wanted him back NOW. I wanted to forget Sunday morning’s sermon about the prodigal son’s father who quickly and exuberantly forgave him.

We didn’t make it to the Power Team show. The big kids were very disappointed, but they [wisely] sensed that it wouldn’t be to their advantage to whine about it. Ry finally confessed to the incident, though Ri was an accomplice. The Preschool Pandemonium Pair thought it would be funny to plug the sink and watch it fill up, *sigh.