If this is a circus, where are all the clowns? Oh wait, that's me I guess.

Since my memory is just about as short as the time it takes me to get everything ready and get outside some days, I usually try to write myself a few notes to remind myself what exactly I want to do. If I don't, I'll end up going outside and bouncing around the yard like a pinball from plant to plant only to realize a couple hours later that I'd totally forgotten to do what I'd originally gone outside to do. Usually it's just things like "potatoes need hilling", "these seeds need to go into the ground now" or "does this need to be watered/mulched/deadheaded, etc..." you get the idea.

Today I went outside with a game plan. A few weeks ago, I forgot all of my melon seedlings out on the front step on an insanely hot day. Five different kinds of melon seedlings all dead. I'm not going to lie, I kind of wanted to cry. I'd been daydreaming of having this big patch of melons and pumpkins. Yeah, I killed the pumpkins too. Out of them all I only have a couple kinds of melon seeds left. I realized last night that they don't take as long as some of the others so if I were to get them into the ground today they might actually have a chance.

So my list for today was:

• plant melon seeds and mulch the area they will be growing in.
• check plants in the garden and water them (only at the roots, tomatoes are looking a little blighty)
• hill potatoes

Not a long list right? Seems pretty reasonable doesn't it? Well, after getting the kids dressed and covered in sunscreen and gathering everything I needed I went outside to do these things. While I checked on some of the plants in the garden, my four year old thought he would help me out and water the garden. I have one of those sprayers with a bunch of different settings. It's really very fun for a four year old, but not so fun for the plants that are getting blasted with water. If my little basil plant comes back I'll be amazed. Same goes for the carrots he blasted. He was only trying to help, but he ended up drenching just about everything in the garden including me.

Meanwhile, my eight year old shows up with his dirt bike, notices a patch of dirt and decides that it looks like a fantastic place for him to do burnouts with the back wheel. That patch of dirt just so happened to be a patch of dirt because I planted seeds there a few days ago. Did I have it marked? No, but I shouldn't have had to. He knows he is not supposed to do burnouts in the yard.

By the time I got a phone call from my sister in law wanting some information, I was so glad to have a reason to give up and go inside. So the plants are watered. That's it.

Sometimes I feel like all I am doing is running around trying to avoid disaster after disaster. One mess is cleaned up, another is made in another room. One thing is planted, another thing is being destroyed a few feet away. Soon I realize it's late afternoon, I feel like I've accomplished absolutely nothing, but I'm exhausted. By the end of the day, my husband gets home and it looks like I've done absolutely nothing because my house (on a good day) looks exactly like it did when he left that morning. I on the other hand, look and feel like I've been wrestling tigers, or alligators or...trucks.

If I could draw, I would draw a comic strip of myself today and I would be a circus clown running around frantically trying to put fires out all over the place but the hose would be kinked. Then when I would look at the hose it would un-kink and spray water all over my face. Then you'd see that my kids are the ones kinking the house because they are playing the "who can push mom so far over the edge she hides from us and eats hot fudge out of a jar with a spoon" game. Yep. Today I'm like a deflated clown. At least that would explain my huge feet...