bucket list? heh, I got your bucket list right here

Here are some things I'd like to do before I die.

Of frustration.


* Go to the bathroom by myself. Without the usual banging and kicking of the door and the trying to peek underneath for fear I've entered another dimension or something.


* Hear a hearty, "Thanks Mom; that was a delicious meal you made for us." Instead of, "Ugh. Why did you make that?" As if I've scavenged the surrounding fields, scooped up a variety of dung and disguised it as dinner.


* Have a quiet time. That's QUIET. Without some short person thinking that because Mom happens to be sitting still that she must surely need something important to do like find the tiny missing piece of the toy he has been slinging around the house all day which has surely landed behind a large piece of furniture or been eaten by the crawling mini-marauder.


* Be able to walk across the living room floor that's been booby-trapped by randomly tossed toys with sharp corners without amputating my pinky toe or having a spontaneous vocabulary lesson.


* Get through a day of homeschool without a single complaint of boredom, mean teacher or stupid assignment; or threatening to put the kids on whatever school bus happens to drive by our house the next morning.


* Have the kids do their chores willingly, without hissy fits and spinning heads, as if I have asked them to lick the floor clean rather than mop it or to scrub behind the toilet with their very own toothbrush.


* Get the little one potty trained and weaned from the "potty candy" so he doesn't grow up and wonder why M&M's don't fall from the sky every time he makes 'peeps' or 'poops' and so he isn't 37 and still using this juvenile potty vernacular with his colleagues. And asking them for potty candy.