When I got up this morning I had a bunch of energy and frustration that made me attack my kids rooms with fierce cleaning power. The frustration was the product of a missing remote control that had failed to appear in the last 24 hours, regardless of the entire family searching.

First I attacked the girls room and pulled out of there two bags of garbage, two bags of goods and an art easel to donate, and vacuumed a whole canister of garbage and dust! My goodness! Who knew two little girls could shed so much skin in 6 months??? No remote.

Later in the day I grabbed a hold of Joshua's room. I just have his dresser drawers left and then his room will be done. No remote. One giant bag of wooden blocks and a handful of baby books made it into the donation pile.

After everyone took a turn searching the parental unit's recharging station and the oldest child's bunker we resigned to the idea that we would have to pull out of our secret stash a backup remote that I had ordered a while ago when we thought the other remote was broken. Joel reluctantly got the backup remote out because images of his childhood days of painstakingly getting up out of his chair and reaching for a button to change the channel was more than he could bare nearly forced him into the fetal position. Good thing I had a back up plan and he can remain manly and upright.