Yeah, we had a few household chores lined up for the day.

Never got to 'em.

You see, we have these things called heelers...

Now the first unexpected clean-up job of the day had nothing to do with the heelers. I reach into the veggie drawer in the refrigerator for my salad fixin's, and find the bottom of the drawer filled with coke.

No, not that kind of coke. Foolish reader.

Somehow, one of the cans of Coca Cola in the rack above had sprung a pinprick hole, and everything on the bottom shelf was coked to the glass shelf, and the drawers below sticky with the brown stuff.

So, while I cleaned drawers, vegetables and the shelf, the wife cleaned the inside of the refrigerator.

And tried to throw out the two cans of Budweiser that I salvaged from a cooler that fell off someone's truck in the desert, what, six to ten years ago?

But she's got a can of some Irish beer hidden back there that is probably older than the sons, so my antique beverages stayed, too.

I suppose if we were smart, we'd blow the cans like raw eggs and just keep the shells.

So. The first of five unexpected cleaning jobs of the day.

Which led immediately into the second, because just as we finished replacing all the cleaned pieces and items into the refrigerator, the wife headed into the hallway and smelled...

Shit.

Dog shit.

As in, the old heeler mom, who had been sleeping so deeply on our bed before the refrigerator incident started, has now shit on said bed.

And knowing that this is a bad thing, she has been nervously pacing back and forth, stomping said fecal matter into the comforter and sheets.

Not to mention her feet, belly and tail.

Before I can even decide which part of this cleaning job I want to tackle, the wife has stripped the bed and is headed downstairs to the laundry.

Leaving me with the least desired task of cleaning the old, poopy dog in the shower.

Oh, joy.

Immediately after being dried off, the old dog left the bathroom, and peed on the living room carpet.

Clean-up job three.

The easiest of them all.

Fortunately, the dogs were kind enough to allow us dinner in peace.

But their routines call for immediate exiting of the domicile after they have finished their dinner. An event that occurs with much running and frantic barking, at the first available commercial.

Well, at the first available commercial, I made the mistake of looking at the masked heeler, who took that as the initiation of the frantic exiting procedure.

And proceeded to launch herself over the wife's lap, sending the Corelle plate from her dessert crashing into the wall.

Have you ever broken a Corelle dish?

They don't break. They explode into a thousand tiny, sharp shards. The biggest piece was maybe the size of a nickel. We found white splinters of ceramic glass clear across the room and the length of the hallway, both directions.

So. Clean-up job number four. Which took the longest time and effort, carefully extracting the pieces from the carpet and floors, and then vacuuming the finer shards.

Having heelers is such fun.

And then, upon returning with clean bedding from the drier, the wife again found the upstairs reeking of, well, shit.

The heeler mom relieved herself in the freshly cleaned hallway.

That's what we get for giving them prime rib scraps with their dinner last night.

But at least now we can go to sleep in clean sheets, knowing the old heeler with the failing bowel controls should be empty.