There is a meme going around Facebook that says, “Cleaning
while there are children present is like brushing your teeth while eating
Oreos.” I find this to be a generally true statement but sometimes it is
compounded which makes cleaning with children present more like trying to brush
your teeth with your mouth chuck full of Oreos, and marshmallows, and mint
chocolate chip ice cream, and...crap, now I’m hungry.
Anyway, I have an incredibly busy week this week, like every
moment is planned. Birthdays, cakes, baby showers, Republican women’s dinner,
yeah, just nuts. Normally on weeks like this I ignore my house. Let’s face it,
I’m good but not quite good enough to maintain a perfect house, do all the crap
that’s required of me, and be a halfway decent wife and mother so I just
pretend that I don’t live in a pigsty, get through my week and then spend the
next week yelling about how we live in filth. But this week I have Bible Study
at my house plus company coming on Saturday. I figured that I should at least
make a decent path through my house so that people can walk and maybe sit.
Things started out pretty good this morning despite the fact that William has
not let me put him down without screaming for the last 48 hours. I got dishes
washed before story time at the Library (go me!) and got my house vacuumed by
3:00pm. I know that doesn’t sound good but seriously, sometimes it takes me 2
days to vacuum my house. But then it happened, I made the mistake of going to
the bathroom. I had just sat down when Asher came in with a cookie in his
hands. I believe they hide food for this very type of occasion. Right before my
very eyes he began to crumble it and then he walked out of the room to spread
his cookie throughout the house. And I was helpless; stuck on the toilet until
my business had been thoroughly conducted. Thankfully, this was a small mishap
thanks to my handy dandy Dust Buster which still works despite Asher throwing
it into the full bathtub. Crisis averted.
By this time the baby was crying after waking up from his 2
minute nap. I picked him up and carried him to the living room to nurse him. There
is a rule of motherhood which states that one should always look before
sitting. I forgot this rule and plopped down. Apparently now we store our
kool-aid in our non-sippy cups right in the middle of couch cushions. I’ll end
this part of the story here. You can imagine where it went.
Somewhere amidst all the chaos that is my day I managed to
make dinner, do more dishes, clean the bathroom, Windex some windows, watch
some extra kids, do a load of laundry, and some other stuff. Matt arrived home
and we ate dinner and then I abandoned him…I mean left momentarily for the
grocery store. The plan was that while I was at the store he was going to
assemble the fabulous new cabinet he bought for the kids’ coloring stuff. I was
gone about an hour in which time the children decided that they must get paper
out and cut it into a million tiny pieces. No big deal. I can handle that. Then
they decided to get a few decks of cards out and throw them about. Again, no
big deal, I can handle that. Then they decided…wait for it…that the STYROFOAM
that protected my fabulous new cabinet looked fun. As I sit here typing it
looks as if there has been a snow storm in my house. I can’t handle that.
I have decided that I’m done. People can just kick their way
through the crap for Bible Study tomorrow. I’m going to eat a hoho now.
