Little Leprechauns

My brother used to say I had a little leprechaun in my head indiscriminately pushing buttons. Well, now I have four of them sprung to life around me, and I'm a just a pawn in whatever crazy game they're playing.

I have no control over simple, but important, details of life: how much sleep I get, when I can go to the restroom, and how sticky my house is.

My baby is my Leprechaun-in-Charge. He's getting over a cold right now, so every cough and snuffle he made last night sprang me from my bed with arms and legs flaying like Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. Once I realized in my half-asleep state that he wasn't awake, I wheeled round toward my bed to collapse, my head bobbling on my shoulders...ah, if I only had a brain!

Adjutant-Leprechaun (my preschooler) placed an open juice in her sister's lunch container. It dribbled out onto our new couch. My son realized his sister had done something hugely naughty and proceeded to bring the evidence to me in the bathroom.

"Mama, look what Ella did," he said, holding it up as it leaked lemonade faster than a BP pipeline.

I followed the trail of stickiness he'd brought through my bedroom and down the carpeted hall to the puddle on the laminate flooring in front of the couch. I wanted to scream, because I've seen enough juice and milk spills to send me to the local asylum for a good two months at least rehab, and I'm threatening to make everyone drink from sippy cups until they're twenty.

I put baking soda on the couch. It's our solution for any liquid mess in our home, because it sucks any fluid right up and clumps very nicely into easy to dispose of lumps. Arm & Hammer owes half their business to me and my husband, because if there's a potty accident on the carpet, my husband and I could knock each other out cold racing for the baking soda. "Quick, get the baking soda!" I'll yell if there's a spill on the living room rug. Wine on the chair? "The baking soda! The baking soda!" If I was bleeding from some terrible accident onto the new sofa, I would lift my head in operatic fashion, waving my arm limply at the mess, and urge my husband to, "apply...the...bak...ing...soda!"

So you understand why I began dumping it over every little drop of lemonade on the carpet before my resolve gave out halfway down the hall. Too many drops and, besides, our vacuum cleaner can't take much more baking soda before it wheezes out its last breath in white, dusty protest. Anyway, there was already a pound or two on the floor where our preschooler had had a potty accident.