I'm s'mad I can't sleep. At present I'm sitting here in my living room looking over the wreckage. Today my husband took the kids to play laser tag and to hit some baseballs, and to just goof off in general supposedly to give mom some "time alone." Translation…"Mom plans on cleaning house today we better get the heck out of dodge."
Okay, fine. Often it is easier for me to just roll up my sleeves and get things done than to direct the traffic of who should do what, where and why.
"BUT Mom, I cleaned the bathroom LAST time."
Yeah, last MONTH. If you call running a rag over the sink "cleaning the bathroom."
BUT MOM, why should I pick up the living room, I didn't make the mess in here. That's not fair."
I never thought I'd be the kind of mom that would ever say: "Because I said so."
But now I say it. BECAUSE. I. SAID. SO.
My favorite excuse from my nine year old son.
"I can't. I think my legs are broken."
So, my family comes home from their day of lollygagging and within ten minutes…probably not even that…what I'd worked ALL day to clean was destroyed.
They decided to watch movies. Good end to a nice day.
Well bully for y'all. I thought to myself and I decided to just sit back and wait and see if anyone would bother to pick up a thing, one thing, before they went to bed.
The mess statistic as of 1:00 a.m. Sunday night:
8 pairs of shoes in my living room. That is sixteen individual shoes. Not even piled in front of the door, no, like easter eggs they're scattered all willy nilly about the place.
2 cups under the couch, 1 cup beside the couch.
1 granola bar wrapper shoved under the couch and some other stuff, but I'm not going to see what it is.
1 batting glove.
Some sort of tool which says Dewalt on it.
Two bowls and one spoon.
A box of art supplies.
Socks. (single of course, not matching.)
X-box games (two) gaming control (one)
A blanket (looks like someone spilled something and used the blanket to cover it up.)
And that's just the living room.
In the kitchen---Oh god. I don't even want to talk about the Kitchen!!
Half eaten bags of chips left open. Left OPEN. Are they trying to drive me mad? I think they are.
I am having this really strong desire to dump ALL the chips on the floor in the kitchen and just dance on them. Two step, boot scootin boogie, stomp…whatever. Dance, dance, dance on potato chips and just leave them there and when the kids wake up in the morning and ask what happened I'll pull out some of their own lines on them:
"What? What mess? Where? I don't see anything. Oh…that….I didn't do that. Don't worry about it, it's not a big deal, why don't you just CHILAX sheesh, you'd think you'd never seen potato chips on the floor before."
Amendment:
ReplyDeleteI took a nap after getting the kids out the door to school today and when I woke up my very, very sweet husband had picked up the mess for me. Which was very nice, but I still think my heathens need to learn to be responsible for their own tornado-ish ways. They did not learn anything from this, other than someone will always be there to pick up their crap for them. I think this Mom is going to revolt. One more sock, wrapper, article of clothing thrown on the floor in the living room might push me over the edge.
i relate to this.
ReplyDeletei came home one day to discover the dryer was broken. someone had tried to dry hiking boots in the dryer. this was during a three year period of a blended family experiment. the dryer episode came close to undoing me. i loaded up the laundry and drove to the closest laundromat that would have 10 washers i could use at once. this was the day i wrote my first poem. i'm still working on that first poem, but otherwise i like the doors that opened because of the hiking boots in the dryer. the blended family is no longer, not because of the hiking boots, but still i relate to the edge in your post.
Tonight my son and I had a talk about your post topic exactly. I told him how I was disappointed that he complains every time I ask him to help out around the house. He politely explained to me that he would happily clean anything as long as I didn't ask him to do it.
ReplyDeleteI think I might have to try the potato chips trick!!
Loved the story - Found you through SheWrites.
-Buffi
My Wonderfully Dysfunctional Blog
Sherry,
ReplyDeleteLove how hiking boots in the dryer led you to the laundry mat, and also to poetry...this is the reason I find poetry so essential. Keeps me from entertaining violent thoughts (like throwing those hiking boots at someone) or losing my mind with my family! Although, i admit, I have actually thrown a shoe at a child before. I'm a poor aim, no harm, no foul.
Buffi,
Glad you found me. I'm off to check out your writing.
Mel
There were day I thought the mess in my house was Karmic payback. When I was a kid, I'd hide the Brussell Sprouts I didn't want to eat in the couch cushions when no one was watching me. Bet my mom really hated finding those, which was likely not so hard to do once they started to stink...
ReplyDelete