Twenty minutes later, I got back home.

Twenty minutes. One thousand, two hundred seconds. One fifth of an hour. How could all this happen so quickly?

The first sign of trouble was that the kids had somehow managed to trap the cat with legos. Sasquatch was an old cat, pushing fifteen years, and his kittenish exuberance had given way to somnolence. He sat in his rainbow-colored plastic prison cell, glaring up at me dourly through the wide brick bars, his yellow eyes simmering with accusation. “You did this to me,” he seemed to say. “Your stupid uterus spawned the creatures that unjustly imprisoned me. You’ll hear from my lawyer about this. I have rights.”

I picked my way through the minefield of scattered lego bricks and action figures. I found Tim sitting on the couch with his head tilted back, snoring. That’s when I heard splashing water, the sound of a bathtub overflowing. A small waterfall was trickling down the stairs from the upstairs bathroom. “At least he got the kids in the bath,” I sighed.