I really thought I would be the one to lose it first.

Being so used to having umpteen balls up in the air at once as the domestic goddess/part-time employee/insanely popular woman I am, having to sit around and pretty much do nothing all the time makes me a wee bit twitchy.

If, for some reason, I managed to keep the flood of insanity at bay (trick: sandbags. Lots and lots of mental sandbags stacked impossibly high by the dedicated army reserve troops in my head), then my husband - the man doing all the chores, breaking up the heap of fights, battling the laundry monster, making all the meals - would be the first off to the loony bin.

So far, we're both okay. A little stressed, a little frustrated by my limitations and slower-than-anticipated recovery, but otherwise fine.

It's Spawnling I'm worried about.

I never suspected the four-year-old would be the one to snap. But when I hobbled into the kitchen this morning and was introduced to his latest invention, I quickly realized the boredom of being cooped up at home most of the time has started taking its toll. He's being creative, but a weird kind of creative. Observe.

Meet the Flossing Chair.

Prototype only, patent pending.

"Spawn," I asked. "What's this?"

"It's a flossing chair. Duh." he replied, somewhat annoyed by my ignorance.

"And what does one do on a flossing chair?" I inquired, curiously.

He looked at me and rolled his eyes. "Well, you obviously floss your teeth."

"See," he continued, as if he were talking to a really stupid monkey, "there's some sticky tack holding the floss up on the chair so it's easy to reach. And then there's a magazine you can read while you're sitting there, flossing."

Given the eye rolling and the sighing going on, this really stupid monkey figured she dare not ask how one flosses and flips through a magazine at the same time. Instead, I figured I would turn this into a dental hygiene lesson. "So... Does this mean you're going to start flossing now?"

If he were at all telekinetic, death would have come swiftly for me with that look. "Um, no."

I decided to leave Dr. Doom alone for awhile. Apparently someone pissed in his Crazy Man Wheaties this morning.

I think we need to start getting out more, or it's going to be a very long - albeit impressively creative - summer.