(Original Publication Date, 4 November 1990)
Panel 1: We see Mike and Liz walking home from the bus stop in the pouring rain. Mike smiles as he gets drenched (because he'd rather have pneumonia than hat hair) and Liz (who is actually carrying things in a binder) walks into puddles like a toddler. This is meant somehow to show their hatred of their mother and all of the love in her great big heart.
Panel 2: Speaking of Elly, she looks over her shoulder as one of them slams a door on his or her way in.
Panel 3: As always, she gasps in horror as boots are just plain dumped all over the hallway floor for her to pick up. It is as if she has never heard of an item called a boot tray. At least they weren't in such a hurry to either warm up or get out of wet clothes that they forgot to hang up jackets and such this time.
Panel 4: Her reaction this time is not to point at the mess to dumbfounded children who can't pick up on the fact that clothes don't magically hang themselves up. It is to tell John to do something. We do not know what that something is.
Panel 5: "Something" turns out not to be "going to Canadian Tire to finally buy a boot tray" so Elly can point to it as her idiot children fail to understand what it is and why they should use it. IT is instead to go to a building supply store and ask for wood.
Panel 6: We see John in his workshop putting together a sort of drying rack for boots in which the boot goes over one of the long wooden dowels sticking out of a longer, flatter piece of wood.
Panel 7: Elly finally points something out to dolt children who forget why she claims to chase after them picking up the things they drop behind them thoughtlessly.
Panel 8: As the boots dry on the drying rack we never see again, Elly tells herself that it's exasperation and not necessity is the mother of invention.
Summary: This irritating fixation on things not done and how much that hurts her leads nicely into the next two weeks in which
howtheduck will tell you about Mike and his non-stop fear that people will see him as weak and vulnerable and deserving of abuse if it's ever revealed that he has feelings for someone not himself. Only totally egocentric monsters who only care about their own needs are strong and worthy of respect, you see.