Oh my GOD! It's The End Of The World As We Know It, or TEOTWAWKI for our fellow survivalists out there.

The end has come! It's worse than Global Warming, or is it Global Cooling? I get those so confused. It's actually worse than a huge asteroid hitting the earth and killing us all, (cue Charlie and Cody barking, "LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK, LOOK! It's come to kill us all!)

You see, this morning Daddy committed the worst offense an almost five year old could imagine.

Mommy was out of the house for some well deserved range time. After all she had her, new to her rifle for over a month and had yet to make it go bang!

I was left at home with the three monkeys, much to their dismay. Much wailing and whining and gnashing of teeth ensued, at least till I turned on cartoons for them.

I decided to spend some time battling the never ending laundry monster. With three small monkeys laundry is something that really has no end, except maybe when we ship the last one off to the Marine Corps, (they can learn how to do their own laundry on a concrete table with cold water and a scrub brush). I wandered through the house locating bits of laundry everywhere from where it belonged, (in the laundry basket!) to where it didn't belong, (who put their dirty socks in the pantry?)

When I pick up laundry I have a rule, if it's on the floor, it's dirty. Well it seems that Emelie's favorite blue shirt was on the floor, she had worn it the day before. Silly me, I immediately assume it's dirty and promptly deposit in the laundry basket. Said basket then gets transferred to the washing machine, the washing machine then gets started. About the time everything in the machine gets good, wet, and soapy, Emelie discovers that her blue shirt is not occupying the same piece of floor as it was when she took it off. It was the absolute end of the world!

Mind you, several days before she could not wait to get out of that very same shirt! We had been out fishing at the local pond. Emelie is the designated returner of all caught fish. In this particular case she had just been handed a nice sized bluegill and was trying to toss it back in the pond. It seems that Mr. Bluegill was a little unhappy about being yanked out of the water and handled by three small children. Mr. Bluegill decided to flip when he should have flopped. He ended up dropping head first down Emelie's favorite shirt, with her in it! If he had just fallen on through it wouldn't have been as much of an issue, as it was he got stuck with his tail sticking out of the top of her shirt. Of course the tail was right about level with her mouth. Mr. Bluegill decided at this point anywhere was better than trapped in a 4 1/2 year olds shirt. Mr. Bluegill then decides to frantically try to "swim" away. You can just picture that tail, SMACK, SMACK, SMACK, right at lip level on poor Emelie. I really wish I had my camera for that one. America's Funniest Home Videos would have paid nicely for it!

Back to laundry day. Emelie has now discovered that I've just exiled her favorite shirt to the furthest reaches of the known universe, (also known as the washing machine). So begins the temper fit/tear fest. She repeatedly stomped into wherever I happened to be just to stomp her feet and tell me, "I'm MAD at you!" I of course compounded the problem by laughing. At one point as I was whittling away at the 42' tall monster pile of laundry she stomped in and told me, "I'm so mad at you I WON'T help you fold laundry!" Silly me, I made the problem even worse, I laughed yet again!

Finally the washer gets done churning away on the 495,292,181,189,453,124 load of laundry. I fish the stuff out and go to toss it in the drier. Lo and behold, I find Emelie's FAVORITE shirt! I call Emelie over, "Emmie I have your shirt for you!" She comes charging over with a big grin, stops a little short and stare at me suspiciously because I am having a hard time containing my laughter. She decides whatever I am laughing about is worth the price and grabs her shirt. Opps, nice and wet, fresh from the washing machine. Guess I should have dried it first.