Last week, my wife and children left me.

Before you turn to your spouse, offer up a high five, and say, "About time!" I have to clarify: They went to the beach for an entire week. Because I am too important to take off an entire week, and I am frankly not that big a fan of 12 hours in the car with kids, I stayed behind for a few days to "work" and said I'd catch up mid-week via airplane.

This meant that I had a completely empty house for three days. Even the family dog was gone, compliments of my in-laws, who clearly didn't think I was capable of taking care of even an animal. (To be fair to my in-laws, it took me a day and a half to realize he was gone.)

Being alone in the house also meant I could spend some time doing projects that never get done with all the distractions of daily life. I could clean the basement of all those items my wife was too sentimental to let go of. I could hook up the TV in the kitchen to big speakers with a bass boost so deep your fillings vibrate. (OK, that one was more of a "too much time on your hands" task, but when something explodes in an action movie, it'll knock a coffee cup off the table.)

The biggest benefit, however, was that I could paint the steps. The top stairs in our old house are painted black. When we moved in, the stairs had been covered for many decades with a carpet runner. When we pulled up the runner, we found the tops of the steps heavily damaged, and rather than getting them refinished, we painted them black.

In a busy house, there is no good time to paint stairs. The minute you do, somebody forgets something upstairs or has to go to the bathroom (NOW!). The only real solution is to paint every other step, tread carefully for a day or so until the paint is dry, then do it again.

About five years ago, my wife carefully painted every other step, then put little sticky notes on the unpainted ones that read "STEP."

Our son, then 10 years old, was the first to ignore the little sticky notes. He came bounding down the stairs, leaving footprints on each newly painted tread, and then black footprints in the hall. He took the notes to mean, "STEP I just painted! Keep off!"

Our twin daughters were next, leaving little barefoot prints on each of the painted steps. Their excuse was more inventive: They climbed the entire flight of stairs to see if all the little notes said the same thing.

The dog didn't walk on the steps. He climbed up on them and stretched out, falling asleep and then yelping when he found himself stuck in the paint. It took weeks for the black to wear off his fur.

My wife became so frustrated that she refused to repaint, and for the past five years, we've lived with a lasting monument to the fact that no one pays attention in our house.

So before I went off to work, I got up early and carefully painted every other step, covering over all the footprints that we'd almost but not quite gotten used to. I carefully placed little sticky notes on the unpainted steps, saying over and over to myself, "step on the notes, step on the notes ...." Then I placed a couple of chairs at the bottom of the stairs, sort of a speed bump in case I forgot.

As I was leaving for work, I remembered I'd left my wallet up in our bedroom. I cursed, ran back in the house, carefully hopped up the steps two at a time, and retrieved it. Before I could leave the bedroom, the phone rang. It was my wife reminding me not to forget my bathing suit when I came to the beach.

So I was thinking, "bathing suit, bathing suit ..." as I thumped back down the steps. I was so deep in thought that I didn't notice the squishing sounds even as I breezed by the chairs at the bottom of the stairs.

Behind me, step by step, I'd left a monument to the fact that no one in our house pays attention.

Not even me.