"Lee? Lee, are you getting up?" The knocking on the door increased in intensity as Lee rolled over into the pillows. "I'm going now. The children will be up soon." his mother's voice called through the door.

"I'm getting up," he answered back. He rolled over and looked at the early morning sun coming in the window. He hated daylight savings time...the sun came up early and there were days that he needed to rest. He had spent the previous day re-wiring parts of the house and waited up half of the night for a friend, who was a licensed electrician, to check out the wiring. By the time that Lee had replaced the insulation and put the drywall back into place, it was actually early morning before he finally went to bed.

His mother was going to the tennis club and it was Lee's day to be with the children. He knew that they would be getting up...they rarely slept late. He rolled back over on his stomach, enjoying the cool breeze blowing in the window. The drapes danced in the breeze and his eyelids were getting heavier. He yawned and burrowed deeper into the pillows, thinking that he would lie there for just a few minutes longer.

CRASH! Lee's eyes flew open at the sound of breaking pottery. It sounded like it was coming from below where the kitchen was located. He looked over at the clock and realized that he had fallen asleep for about another hour and something was going on downstairs. Throwing back the covers, he quickly rose from the bed and slipped into jeans and the shirt that he had worn yesterday. Hurrying down the stairs he rushed to the kitchen where he thought the noise had come from.

"No, Daddy!" Molly cried out as he started to enter the kitchen. He paused to look over the old brick floor to see his 10-year old daughter standing near a broken bowl. "You haven't got shoes on."

"What on Earth?" Lee asked as he looked down to his bare feet and then over to the floor in front of him. The floor was littered with pieces of broken pottery, a few eggs and...he hoped that the liquid was water.

His 3-year old son came up to him smiling, "Hi, Daddy!" he announced. Nicholas was still wearing his pajamas and cowboy boots. He carried a small pan with an egg in it and a large wooden spoon. "I cook." he stated firmly, beating on the egg with the spoon. Either the egg was already boiled or it was the toughest egg that Lee had seen in a while... it did not give in to the small boy's repeated pounding.

The front of his blue pajamas was soaked. His father took a guess at what the liquid was and asked his son, "Nicholas, did you have an accident?"

Nicholas paused in his pounding and looked down at the front of his pajamas, holding the pan away from him, nearly spilling the egg on the brick floor. Stretching out the front of the terry pajamas, he touched it with his chubby little fingers, "No, syrup." he answered, rubbing his fingers on his sleeve.

"Why do you have syrup on you?" his father asked, carefully stepping into the kitchen.

"From pancakes." the curly blond-haired boy answered. He pointed to the girl behind him. "Molly did it."

Molly frowned back at him, "I can't do pancakes so I have decided to do an omelet...we had extra eggs." she explained. She looked down at a few of the eggs that were lying about on the floor, "I dropped some of them."

"So I see." her father answered. "What are you making?"

Earlier Molly had hauled out the large aluminum wok from the storage cabinet and had several eggs broken up with the shells in the bottom of the wok. She had mixed in several items, judging from the colors in the egg mixture. As Lee walked over to inspect the wok, he realized that she had broken all of the egg into the container... including the shells.

"Why are the shells in with the eggs?" Lee asked looking at the collection of food in the wok.

"Ne-Ne puts them in the roses 'cos she says that the roses need calcium. People need calcium too, so I left them in with the eggs." She lifted the large stirring spoon and looked into the bowl, "I also put in onions, green peppers and cucumbers...the red stuff is catsup. I couldn't think of anything else to put in the eggs."

Lee ran his hands through his hair and yawned as he looked around the kitchen and the mess that the children had made. He couldn't say anything...his mother had told him that she was going out and he should get up before the children. He looked down as Nicholas clumped back over to his side, still with the small pan and the egg. The small boy stretched the pan up to his father. "That's no fun," he announced and went over to inspect one of the broken eggs on the floor.

On the counter by the toaster was a pile of toast, where Molly had apparently "toasted" the entire loaf of bread. A plastic tub of butter and a jar of jelly sat next to the pile. Lee picked up the young boy, careful to hold the sticky side away from himself and went over to the sink. Sitting the small boy on the counter by the sink, he wet the dishcloth with warm water and began to wipe over the sticky areas on the little boy's pajamas.

Molly set the wok down in the kitchen chair and came over to the sink to watch as Lee tried to clean the squirming boy. "Stop Daddy, that tickles..." the child squealed up at his father.

Molly watched him trying to clean the young child then smiled up at her father, "We were just trying to fix breakfast. Nothing seemed to fix easy."

"Yes, I know, Molly." her father replied with a sigh. Smiling back down at her, he placed Nicholas back down on the floor. "Maybe we had better forget about breakfast this morning and try to clean this up."

Just as Lee turned from the sink he heard the front door close as his friend Chip entered the house. Chip whistled as he walked through the house, back to the kitchen. "I thought that I would help you finished up the wiring..." he was saying before coming to a complete stop. He ended his statement with a long whistle, "What happened here?"

"Molly and Nicholas are fixing breakfast," Lee answered, "so I get to clean the kitchen first."

Chip took an exaggerated step over one of the broken eggs as he stepped into the kitchen causing the children to laugh at him. "Can I do something to help?"

"Yeah, tell me how to get an egg up off the floor." Lee asked, trying to clean up one egg with paper towels. He was succeeding only in chasing the egg white across the aged brick floor of the kitchen.

"Blow torch and scraper?" Chip suggested. "I avoid cooking whenever possible...the lady in my life had better know how to cook." He walked by the chair and looked into the wok as he passed. "Ugh! What is this?" he asked, picking up the wok and bringing it to the sink.

"That's an omelet." Molly replied, tears starting to well up in her eyes.

"I knew that!" Chip answered, sitting it down on the counter. He looked over at Lee and the small boy, who was trying to pick up several pieces of bread that had fallen from the toast pile to the floor. "What do you say that we go out to the Blue Dish Diner? We can clean this up when we get back."

Lee looked over to Chip, "Let me change Nicholas, first. We need to have it cleaned up before Mom returns or she will have everybody's head."

"We can do that." Chip agreed. "So let's us be off." He reached down and grabbed Molly's hand, "So little lady, what do you want for breakfast?"

Molly smiled up at her father's friend, "I still think I want an omelet..."
 
 

Several hours letter Chip, Lee and the children returned from breakfast. Lee slowed the car down as he noticed the little green jeep sitting in the driveway of the house.

"Mom's back and we left the kitchen a mess." he commented as he drove the car into the driveway.

"You're in trouble, Daddy." Nicholas sang out from the back seat.

Lee looked up in the rearview mirror at his little son, "No, I'm not. It's Uncle Chip's mess. He is the one that made us go out and leave the mess."

"Me?"

"Yeah! Who said that we would clean it up when we got back? Who wanted to stop by the store and 'look around'?" Lee reminded him.

They got out of the car and went in the front door to find Helen Crane sitting on the couch reading a magazine. She smiled at them sweetly as they entered the room. "Well, hello!"

"Hi." Lee greeted her, kissing her on the forehead. "How was tennis this morning?" He looked over at Chip, "Have you been in the kitchen yet, Mom?"

"No, Sweetie, I haven't. Is there something in there?"

"No, Chip and I have something to attend to in there. Can you keep the children entertained for a few minutes?"

"Love to." Mrs. Crane answered.

Lee turned and grabbed Chip by the elbow, "Chip, we have something to look at in the kitchen."

Chip smiled down at Helen. "We'll be right back."

They entered the kitchen to find it completely clean. Lee looked over at Chip, "I'm in trouble now!"

He turned and left the kitchen and walked back into the living room where his mother was sitting, talking to the children. "I bet you are wondering what happened to the kitchen? I really appreciate you taking care of it for me."

"Taking care of what?" his mother asked, concern was written on her forehead.

"You might have noticed that there was a bit of a mess in the kitchen...."

"What kind of a mess?"

"You weren't in the kitchen?" Lee turned and looked at Chip, who shrugged a reply.

"No, I wasn't in it. Lee, what is going on?"

"Oh... nothing, really."

"Yeah, everything is just peachy... well, maybe a bit eggy!" Chip replied, grinning at Lee.

Lee cut his eyes at Chip, but that did nothing to wipe the smile from Chip's face.

"Oh," his mother continued. "Your book is on the dining room table. It seems that Harry and Chief Sharkey dropped it by while you were gone. Harry did say that he wanted to talk with you about the decorating in the kitchen." She looked puzzled. "What did he mean by that?"

Lee looked over at Chip again, who was trying not to burst into gales of laughter. "I can only imagine what he meant by that."

Chip smiled as he picked up his jacket from the back of the armchair. "That's one conversation that I would love to sit in on. Do you mind giving me a call? I would like to be there."

Lee turned back to Chip, "Sorry that you have to leave."

Chip roared with laughter, "Bye, Helen." He went by and rubbed the heads of the children. "Molly, keep the Captain out of trouble, okay? You have my permission to make him an omelet whenever you like."

He went toward the door and couldn't help but smile to himself, when he heard Helen asking her son about the omelet.

"Lee, what's this about an omelet? Did I miss something?"