Yesterday we did something that will turn out to be either brilliant or completely stupid. We put the kids in charge of the laundry.

Boy will tote the dirty clothes into the laundry room and load the washer, then the dryer, then tote the clean clothes to our bedroom (aka Laundry Central). Girl will sort and fold. Both of them will put away their clothes. That’s the theory. They’ll get an allowance for this, but I can’t tell you how much it is because we told the kids that how much money you make is supposed to be kept private.

Today is the first official day. After we gave them their assignments yesterday, they tore off in a fit of enthusiasm. Boy got a load started in the washer. Girl folded about three towels and then announced, “I’m going to take a break.”

Later that afternoon I asked if she would mind if I folded a basket of clothes to give her a head start. “Sure,” she said. “I’m still on break.”

So basically I’m expecting lots of clothes strewn across my bedroom, which won’t make it that different from usual. But I have to resist the urge to load and fold. In other words, I have to lower my standards. Which are pretty far down there to begin with.

Bob wrote a blog post about a series of senior moments he endured last week, which you can read here. So in the interest of fairness, and because he’s threatening to blog about it if I don’t, I must tell you about mine.

Yesterday I was making a vat o’ potato salad for a dinner party. As I stirred all the ingredients together, I thought, “Huh, that didn’t take as long as I thought.” But as I stirred them a little longer, I realized the potatoes weren’t mushing together like they should. Then I realized, it’s because I forgot to cook them. So I had to dig through all the mayonnaise and other glop to extract each hard potato slice, one by one, then wash them off, then boil them.

So there you have it. You’re reading it here first — and so are the guests who ate it last night.

There’s a new little quiz on Facebook, “What kind of mother are you?” I haven’t taken it yet. I know what kind of a mother I am.

- I’m the kind of mother who flips through Facebook while my kids are screaming for macaroni and cheese.

- I’m the kind of mother who can’t sleep all night because the upstairs air conditioner broke and it’s 89 degrees up there where the kids are sleeping, and it’s 79 degrees down here where I’m sleeping, and I can’t decide if I should wake them up and bring them down here to sleep on the floor or leave them to their sweaty but peaceful slumber.

- I’m the kind of mother who will spend $2.50 on a school notebook with a Corvette on the cover when a 90 cent plain black notebook would work just as well.

- I’m the kind of mother who sometimes slips out of the house early in the morning without kissing everyone goodbye, but they think I kiss them everyday in their sleep, anyway.

Conversation between Girl and me, riding in the car, listening to the radio:

Me: That sounds like Justin Bieber.

Girl: That’s because it IS Justin Bieber.

Me: Wait, did he just say, “You smell, I smell?”

Girl: No, why would he say that? He said, “You smile, I smile.”

Me: Sounds like “you smell, I smell” to me.

Girl: Mom, you have a very bad sense of hearing.

Me: There he goes again. Hear it? You smell, I smell.

Girl: Do you have two ears?

Me: Of course I do.

Girl: I think you only have one. Because one ear hears the first part of the word, and the other hears the last part of the word. I think you only have one ear.

Me: I have two ears.

Girl: Then maybe the eardrum on one of them isn’t working.

Me: Everything’s working but it still sounds like “you smell, I smell” to me.

Girl: Can you hear the “ds” when I say “words?”

Me: Yes.

Girl: Good.