Friday, May 13, 2005

Housework Blues

If you know any secrets for keeping housework from running your life, could you please share them with me?

Savvy mom that I am (or thought I was), I spent last weekend scouring the house from top to bottom because I knew I would be too busy working this week to give it much attention. The place looked great for about a day.

Do you ever feel that you're the only one who thinks about washing a glass and putting it away when you're done? Have you ever shared a bathroom with teenagers who leave their underwear on the floor and toiletries strewn over the counter? Does your family treat the dryer like a spare closet, picking out the clothes they want and leaving the rest? Have you ever gone to answer the phone only to realize all the bases for the handsets are empty? Or how about this: ever have a cat who decides that the litter box just isn't tidy enough (although you changed it that morning) and poops three inches from the box?

Sigh.

The final straw for me happened yesterday afternoon when my son tried to put the milk on its side in the fridge to make it fit. As I sprinted to avert near disaster, he knocked an unopened can of Diet Coke to the floor, where it promptly exploded. Sticky soda spewed everywhere onto the floor, counters, walls,cabinets, ceilings, the clean dishes in the drain board--and all over me.Under normal circumstances I might have maintained some semblance of sanity. However I had just showered, colored my hair, fixed my make-up, put on literally the only set of clean clothes I had left in the house, and--last but by no means least--run out of hormone supplements two days ago.

It wasn't pretty.

Anyway, after vacillating between hysterical threats of kicking my kids out on the street or running away from home myself, things finally settled down again.

My husband took it all in stride. Wise man that he is, he listened to me rant without saying a word. He fed me chocolate then figured out a way to hide exposed computer router cables that had been tripping us up in the hall. Four chocolate covered cherries and a snuggle later, I was back to normal, laughing at his impersonation of our tiny dog on steroids.

This is why marriage is a good thing, I think. You balance out each other's craziness and keep each other from killing the children.

And, of course, having plenty of hormone patches on hand doesn't hurt either.

:)

1 comment:

Jstar718 said...

I had to laugh out loud, when you said, " Have you ever gone to answer the phone only to realize all the bases for the handsets are empty?"
I have been at home with my parents the last few months, and my step-brother just turned 18. This is what it is like in our house, and there is only the one teenager! I'm a family of 8, and this 18 year old is the youngest. I remember when we all lives at home. I was guilty of not keeping after myself when I was a teenager. But now that I'm older, have a daughter, and have ran my own household...it just frastrates the hell outa me.