This Is The Way We WHAT?!

While big brother was off at preschool on Friday morning, I spent some time sweeping the kitchen and cleaning off the dining room table/"horizontal file" in preparation for a lunch date with my girlfriend and her kids. Our mail generally makes it to the "corner" of our oval-shaped table and no further until I deal with it. Often in situations like the one I found myself in that morning, it makes a short hop over to the no-man's land of our buffet, where it can sometimes rest undisturbed for months. But this time I was making a dedicated effort to sort it into piles for response and recycling.

This sifting and winnowing takes some focus, especially when additional categories like "hang on the bulletin board" or "put into the pile of coupons under the fruit bowl in the kitchen" come into play. As I worked with some determination, I heard a song wafting in from the adjacent living room.

"This is the way we brush the dog, brush the dog, brush the dog...this is the way we brush the dog so early in the MOR-NING," sang our two-year-old girl.

'Well, isn't that precious,' I thought, keeping my nose to the grindstone and not turning around to see what she was doing. If she was content, I figured, so was I.

Then came the second verse:

"This is the way we brush the ceiling way up high, brush the ceiling way up high, brush the..."

Ceiling? What? I spun on my heel for a visual. There stood our tiny little wisp of a girl, gripping with both hands the blue broom I'd left leaning against the wall, its handle at a 90-degree angle to the floor and completely over her head. The bristles were within a foot and a half of their target.

I hated to stifle her creativity but decided to retrieve the broom before it came crashing down onto her cranium or my laptop. A part of me was really sorry to miss the next stanza.