“Hey, Mom?” my son said casually as he attached a Lego palm frond to a multi-colored Lego wall he was building on the coffee table as I ironed pertinent clothing near him and my husband raged in front of a Sunday sports event on the wall mounted TV. “Remember that mobile I’m supposed to make?” my son asked.

 “STOP EVERYTHING!” I screamed, and unplugged the iron.

Between bites of his chicken nuggets, my son glued pieces of bark together to form a canoe, created seaweed cutouts and other cutouts as I scoured our arid grounds for sticks as my husband rummaged through office drawers for a ball of rawhide twine as I procured glue and scissors and my husband lashed the sticks that I’d thrown at him with a slow-motion yell: dooooo iiiiittttttt, with the rawhide strips and drilled a hole in the bark and attached our son’s creations to the mobile and suddenly it WAS a mobile and my son had finished his written report that was due with the mobile and the Dodgers lost one of their crucial World Series games and IT WAS TIME FOR BED.

These are the good old days, indeed.