My name's Mike Rowe and this is my job.

My brother calls occasionally and gives me a hard time about what I do all day. He is convinced that I just sit around, watching t.v., talking on the phone and eating ice cream. It has gotten to the point that I just hang up when he starts laughing at me for complaining about a particularly bad day. He doesn't have kids, he has NO IDEA.

Last Friday underwear fell, out of the basket of clothes I had perched on the edge of the washer, into the utility sink - clogging the drain. The washer normally empties into the utility sink. The cat box is directly under the utility sink (stupid place but there is no where else we can put the damn thing - we've looked around). The drain clogged, the water from the washer overflowed out of the utility sink into the cat box. The cat box then overflowed onto the floor and flooded the laundry room. That'll ruin your entire morning, that will.

I had to go to Costco and purchase a 40 lb. tub of cat litter for the box because of the utility sink incident. I had to drag said tub to the back yard and empty the water-logged, clay-clumping litter box and refill it with new litter - all after mopping up the flooded, litter box laden laundry room and heavily sanitizing everthing - including myself.

Had to pick up poo in the dog run, back yard, change my son (4 times before 10 AM) and help Peanut wipe so her "private parts are nice and clean and don't give me pain, Mama." The Diaper Genie was full to capacity and is not exactly containing odors as specified in the warranty. Emptied that and hosed it down with Lysol.

If this wasn't enough, one of our cats can't stomach dry food but decided to give it a whirl last night while we slept. I was alerted to this by my 17-month-old. He held my hand, walked us over to the pile and pointed. Oh, I don't do cat puke but I can't leave it in the middle of the dining room for hours and hours until Hubby can get to it in the evening. Not only would the kids get into it, but all day I would be chanting "CAT PUKE, CAT PUKE!" - generally obsessing about it. And really, who wants that in their head? I cleaned that up too.

So tell me, dear brother, what did you do today?