A few hours earlier, as I was trying to ignore Austin while I read the news, (online, of course, cuz it's free) Austin was naturally trying to contradict my inclination at that moment to pretend like I was the only one home besides the cats. His dad was out procuring caffeine for my ceaseless and overpowering addiction to the Dark Horse...which many of you may so commonly refer to as "coffee"....so Austin knew that this was indeed the time to act.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him pick up a lid to one of his cans of play-doh, toss it casually into the air and then hit it with some sort of a stick he dug out of some dusty unused part of his fantastically spacious bedroom. That play-doh lid slammed into the wall like Barry Bonds had snuck into the boy's room and hit if for him. He then said, "Mommy, I am being bad!", a surefire way to get my attention, he supposed.

I said, "No, you are not being bad.", secretly hoping to see him perform yet another trick of way way advanced dexterity out of the corner of my eye as I read that India has sent all female peace-keeping troops to Liberia because....I don't really know because why and forgive me for saying, I don't think either India or the BBC knows either. So then he said this:

"Yes I am bad!"

And I said, "No you are not!"

And then he said, "You are a BAD MOMMA!"

And then I thought, "Yeah, I am one Bad Momma!"

And then I thought, "No, he means you are being a bad mommy, fool!"

And then I said, "No, I am Not!", and Austin ran out of his room, head-butted me in the leg, hit me with a wooden duck and gave me a hug.