So night before last (Thursday) Dad caught me up much too late. This was not the entire problem. I'd been on the computer for hours without having mopped the floor. This was not the main problem. The main problem was that Dad, having been once been woken by Baron, who I hadn't brought in yet, couldn't get back to sleep. So it's no surprise that he came home from work with no sleep quite prepared to mete out just punishment.

He came home and said I had to do all the dishes for the rest of the month: Owen's, Peter's, mine. Now, this situation has its upsides. I like having full control of the kitchen without having to see what those do do with/to dishes. It's soothing washing lots of plates rather than a pot, then a cookie sheet, then an eggy frying pan. The main problem, in fact, besides suddenly losing a lot of free time, is that I'm always exhausted by the end of the night. According to Mom, this is a good thing. It would be if I were exhausted after I finished, rather than slowing down at about nine-thirty when half my dishes are still to go, so that I'm lucky if I finish at eleven, so I can go upstairs, die on my bed, revive after fifteen minutes or half and hour to get into the shower by eleven thirty, and maybe to bed by midnight or twelve-thirty. Fatigue does not hasten bedtime.

So it's not really a surprise that I broke down in tears at about ten tonight. Granted, it wasn't just dishes. It's been a long day. Dad and I drove to Crete to get three bottle lambs from Scott Borgman, who breeds Australian Shepherds and whom we met while looking for Lark. He didn't have her, but it's an acquaintance--one probably to be perpetuated, since he's now raising sheep in addition to the Boers, horses, and Aussies. So we had to get the lambs settled in, and Owen and I had to go out and feed them right before dishes. Also I'm just getting over a cold, which is going on to make Peter and Doug miserable....and their sore throats struck after Owen and I had finished off all the throat lozenges. And now Dad's coming down with it too.

Not surprising. But very inconvenient, unless I want to explain to Dad--amid gulps, sobs, and sniffles--that I can't possibly deal with all the dishes during lamb season, and that we practice division of labor for a reason. So I went up to break down on Mom's bed. (I almost capitalized bed. Maybe I should.) She told me I was tired because I had a cold, that I had better not think about the fact this is continuing for a month, and evacuated me out to check on Starling. When I came in, she'd finished the dishes, drafted Doug to do the floor, and generally cleared the way for me to go to bed. I wonder if competency if a talent, or comes from raising lots of kids. I hope it's acquired, because otherwise I'm in trouble.