It's Like An Episode of Scooby Doo. Except Not At All.

Yesterday the kids were in school for the required last hour for the last day of the 2012-2013 school year. That would mean that today was the official first day of summer vacation. We'll consider yesterday Summer Vacation Training Day.

I have dreams of being the best mom ever. I think about how fun it would be to take them out for breakfast when they get home from school at 9:30 on their last day.  I have a bucket list of super awesome and very fun things that the kids and I will work on doing together this summer. I envision albums filled with sunshiny photos and smiling faces, because in futuristic visions it's never rainy or unhappy. Except that one rainy day when I want to take pictures of kids in the rain, and everyone will be smiling and having a good time.

But reality is sometimes vastly different than sunshiny dreams. Yesterday on Summer Vacation Training Day when the boys got home from school, we didn't go out for breakfast. I have a very good excuse, though. We'll be leaving for vacation soon and I have so much work to do before then that there was no possible way I could spare an hour or so for the start of summer vacation. And it didn't even occur to me until right now that I could have just made breakfast at home for them.

Clearly I suck at motherhood. Martha Stewart I am not, despite the fact that I have french bulldogs and chickens.

Today I was still working on a lot of that I'm So Busy That I Don't Have Time To Be A Good Mom stuff, and right in the middle of it Becky tossed another to-do on my list. "Mom, there's blood on the floor, and it's not like a dog in heat kind of blood."

I feel as though this needs an explanation but it's rather self-explanatory, right? We raise dogs here, and when dogs are expected to have puppies one can't have a dog spayed. Dogs that aren't spayed come into heat twice yearly and bleed during that time. Think menstruation, except not really. But kind of. The blood part is the same, but we don't have mini doggie tampons to help us out with that. And that is why blood on our floor isn't a big deal, because we're used to it.

Note: we are very aware that if we would ever have a health inspector come to our home, we'd be condemned. Also note that we do mop our floor frequently. Probably far more frequently than anyone else does, and yet we would never ever EVER consider eating anything off our floor. I don't recommend that you do, either.

So the fact that Becky knows the difference between dog-in-heat blood and regular blood is not shocking. There really is a difference, too. Regular blood is thicker and darker. And she was clearly right. There was dark red, thicker blood on the floor. Here was some, there was some, and over there was a little bit as well. Not much, just like someone's foot was bleeding and they were walking around. Spots, really. And very random, not at all like someone's foot was bleeding and they were walking around, unless they mostly hopped across the floor and only put their foot down three times.

I know, right? Very weird.

So I did what anyone would do. I called the dogs to me and did a visual inspection of every inch of every dog. Four dogs inspected, and nobody was bleeding. If Micah would have been bleeding he would have let me know because he's kind of freaked out by blood. And if anyone else was bleeding I probably would have known about it because the band aids are in the pantry, right there in the bloodied kitchen. (Our pantry is the walk-in variety that could hold a small convenience store inside it. We keep a lot of very un-pantry things in there, just because we can.)

Of course, because I took time out to perform detective work and scrub the kitchen floor (again), All The Things didn't get done today. My husband is an incredibly wise man and knows better than to ask, "what did you do all day?" but I can read it in his eyes. I cant' blame him, really. When he comes home from work the sink is full of dishes (while the dishwasher is running), the floors are covered in dog hair (even though I vacuumed in the morning), the toy box is unloaded all over the floor (again), and I have a very glazed over look in my eyes.

I solve mysteries that nobody appreciates, thats why nothing gets done around here.

Update: I never did figure out who was bleeding. Now my list reads:

1. Not Martha Stewart.
2. Not the most fun mom ever.
3. Cannot solve mysteries.

I'm kind of a failure all around.