So it is saturday morning, chore time at the Hatch house.

 I’ve been in bed all morning reading the news and blogging, (I knew John Edwards was a creep, but until this morning I had no idea what a loser he really is…can we make him the poster boy for BAD CAREER POLITICIANS???), and I’ve been going round and round in my head over wether or not to clean the boys bathroom.

I’ve had a nasty chest cold all week, spent most of it in bed, and do NOT feel like cleaning anything, much less the black hole that is the boys special dumping ground.

I used to think when they were toddlers learning how to pee, that when I threw those cherios in the toilet to help them with target practice, that as they grew, the issue of “bad aim” would naturally resolve itself.

Au contrair, they just get worse the taller they grow.

As a seven year old Ben has this nasty habit of waking up and jumping off the top bunk half asleep and making his way to the john where he may or MAY NOT hit the toilet bowl as he relieves his bladder. I have evidence of him in a sleepy state completely missing the toilet as his bladder empties while completely pissing all over the back area behind the toilet.

While I am grateful to no longer have to worry about washing the sheets from three year old bedwetters who could not muster the gumption to get up and pee, sometimes I think it would be easier to pull the sheets off and wash them than have to deal with that glazed, sticky mess behind the toilet every week.

Now, you may well be asking, “Jen, why don’t you have the boys clean up after themselves?” that IS the question now isn’t it?

In theory my children have been trained to clean every bit and space of our home to Mom standards.

Yet with friends, homework, friends, school, friends, fun, and the need for near constant rest and relaxation calling, family chore hour is often fifteen minutes of hard work with forty five minutes of back talk, complaints, and whining thrown in just to make Mom crazy.  Jeff was grounded for the better part of his christmas break for talking back when I asked him to help.  Little brat.  Sometimes the fifteen year olds act worse than the seven year olds.

When I go “inspect” the cleaning after the boys have “deep cleaned” the bathroom, often I wonder if I would get better results if I let Samwise Gandalf Hatch, the family terrier, do the scrubbing.

Even with the boys getting the first layer of grime off the bathroom sink, toilet, and floor, I often have to go in and do a second scrub to get that blackhole to the place where it is not stinking up the whole upstairs.  Whoever thought bringing the outhouse into the home was an improvement on things must have only had daughters to clean up after.

We Mothers know that part of our job is to keep things sanitary and tidy for our loved ones.  We know that disease and filth are inextricably tied together, and so we sanitize and scrub and purify and cleanse all with the hope that our efforts are being recorded by the angels in Heaven as evidence of our Love for our husbands and children.

I’m thinking we need to do some target practice again at the Hatch House…

Where are the Cheerios…