"Kristy, we have a another situation."

It was my husband. Calling me at work on a Monday morning.

He had already wasted two hours of his workday because the computer in his home office kept clicking and then turning itself off. He'd opened it up, vacuumed a couple years worth of dust bunnies from inside and then drove to the store to buy a can of compressed air.

Because we never backup our files, he faced the fact that he would probably lose everything - family photos, a couple year's worth of work and our family's entire financial history. You know, minor stuff.

But just when he was about to declare situation critical, he found the problem: A quarter, a dime and a penny jammed into the computer's disk drive. Jammed, almost certainly, by a 6-year-old boy wondering what his 36-cents would buy him.

Dustin removed the coins and the computer worked fine. Situation resolved.

Well kind of. Someone would need to talk to Sammy about what he can stick into computer disk drives. And while someone was talking about that, he might as well talk about a few other situations lurking around the homestead.

Then it hit me: What my family needs is a Situation Room. A room, like the president's, where we can gather to solve our family crises. Or make them worse.

We could use Sammy's room, because it has become a situation in and of itself.

I've already set our first situation agenda:

The Towel Situation: We go through way too many towels at my house. Do we really need a clean towel each and every time we step, clean and scrubbed, out of the shower? I don't know how many times I have to tell the boys to hang their towel on the towel rack - that is, after all, what it's there for - but I guess I'll have to tell them again.

The Math-Book Situation: For the second year in a row, 12-year-old Taylor has lost his math book. Last year, he had to bicycle to my publisher's house just to do his homework. (My publisher's son was in Taylor's class.)

That one was embarrassing - for me, I mean. My publisher's house? Come on!

This year, he lost his math book before the first-quarter midterms.

He borrowed a book from his math teacher on the promise he'd keep looking.

Sunday, my husband asked him if he'd found it.

"Yes," Taylor replied. "But then I lost it again."

The Milk Situation: I bought two gallons of milk on Saturday afternoon, for more than $3 a piece. By Monday morning, one of the gallons was almost gone. At this rate, I'll be doing a milk run sometime today.

(OK, no I won't. Dad does most of the milk runs, but that's not the point.)

If the kids were actually drinking the milk, it would be one thing. But they're really filling the cereal bowl to the top, dousing it with too much milk, and then leaving the half they don't eat to soak up the milk still left in the bowl. Or they're pouring it in glasses and leaving it untouched on the downstairs shelves, in their rooms or in thermoses in the backseat of the car. By time I find these milk glasses, I'm not pouring the milk down the sink. I'm spooning it out and sending it down the garbage disposal.

And then I'm fumigating the kitchen.

The Paying-the-Guitar-Teacher Situation: Oops. That one's my fault. Situation meeting adjourned.

Reach features editor Kristy Gray at (307) 266-0586 or kristy.gray@trib.com