Important Question: How does she fit all that clutter in just one bag?

This thought occurred to me recently, and I decided it was a fair question to pose to all of you, or at least those of you who read blogs on weekends and who are also in the habit of commenting.

So I suppose this Important Question is directed at you three, then:

Do you remember how old you were when you discovered there is no housekeeping fairy?

That's right-- what tender, innocent age were you when you coldly realized that the person who was sneaking around cleaning up when no one else was looking was actually... you?

Amusing searches, Vol. 7

Here are more of the most amusing searches that brought people here recently, this time with the very simple theme of "complaining about your children." This could really be the first of several in a healthy sub-series of posts.

Note: All search strings are reprinted exactly as they were entered, and in this case, all searchers arrived at my 10 reasons my 3-year-old son may be homosexual post, which is apparently the only post on the Internet whose title features a child identified by a hyphenated label including his age. Or else it's just the strongest and most fascinating.

• why does my 5 yr son old piss around the house (Bloomington, IL) - 1) Because it's easier; 2) because he can; and 3) because he owns the property but isn't responsible for cleaning it. Also, I'd bet he somehow understands he won't be able to get away with it for long, so he's living it up while he can. Ahhh, to be that young again, never in search of the nearest bathroom...

• 3 year olds hands do the same thing (Davenport, FL) - This is a very slippery slope. "Same thing" meaning what? Picking his nose? Playing with his food? Poking his sister? Playing with himself? Stabbing at his dad's eyes whenever he looks away from him? Based on my thankfully fuzzy recollections of that age, you have to be much more specific.

• 9-year-old son lazy barefoot (Sandusky, OH) - Are you looking for a role model for the boy? If so, just let me know, and I'll try to see about getting around to offering him some pearls of wisdom. Better yet, just send him out my way, and he can lay at my bare feet just watching the master at work. Well, maybe "work" is too strong a word.

• my 3 year old son always has to be first - Correction: Your 3-year-old son always WANTS to be first. My 3-year-old daughter is the one who actually must be first. I do not recommend denying her this, or at least not without adequate protection.

• 10 yr old son likes to be naked (Surprise, AZ) - Who doesn't? Especially out there in the deserts of Surprise, Arizona. (Yes, that's really the name.) Let me warn you, though, if you say too much to him about it, you'll find him naked 24 hours a day for the next ten years, powered solely by spite. And nobody likes to see an angry naked guy. So do us all a favor and lay off, lady.

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When 3-year-olds attack

After hearing suspiciously uproarious laughter coming from the bathroom one evening, my wife and I came upon this scene:


Show of hands, how many of you have had this happen?


Editor's Note: For the record, this is only what was left after the perpetrator and her highly amused accomplice tried desperately to destroy the evidence. Also for the record, we have a deceptively large bathroom sink-- that right there is about a third of a large tube of toothpaste.

Dispatches from 2:30 in the morning

While trying to get back around to sorting out what I'd write for my obligatory BlogHer recap post, (after procrastinating by finishing off the hilarious and amazing How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely), I was treated to the following foreboding statement from my shockingly sophisticated 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter M-:

"Momma? Daddy? I burped accidentally and now Woof and my pillow and my sheets are all dirty."

Yes, we confirmed that means exactly what you think it means.

So whatever virus came in with the Thursday crowds at BlogHer has taken a third victim, as my wife J- has been recovering in relative splendor and comfort compared to my evening (and particularly my train ride home) on Friday.

Sorry to anyone to whom I may have spread this germ at the conference-- I only came back Saturday evening because I thought I'd had food poisoning (I even had a post all ready about it) and I felt okay enough to seize this wonderful opportunity once again.

Suddenly, I bet Jenny the Bloggess feels somewhat less disappointed about not getting to meet me. Though I'm sure when she met my unfairly lucky wife (who had wandered off with Middle-Aged Woman from Unmitigated) while rushing somewhere alongside THE Nancy W. Kappes, Paralegal, she was exposed to enough of the germs to satisfy my need for schadenfreude.

I mean, how dare she not seek out one of her legion of pathetic followers by holding up a handheld blue-tube filter over each man's face at the convention??

...Now that I think about it, that probably would have taken 10 minutes, tops. Hiding out as a man at BlogHer would be like hiding out as a transsexual on a Guess Who? board. Actually, that would be a perfect pro-level enhancement for Milton Bradley to add.

Anyway, I've had a fun night reminiscing about all the things we fed my daughter yesterday, and now that she's been back to sleep for awhile in what's left of her bed, I figure I should go lay down and cue the next round.

A conversation with J-: The third child

Here is a revealing conversation I recently had with my wife, J-:

J- (using cartoonish parent voice): M-, did you get a treat for making pee on the toilet? Was it chocolate-covered raisins??

Me: No, just a couple chocolate chips.

J-: Then why were there chocolate-covered raisins on the kitchen floor?

Me: That was me... I had an incident.

J-: (rolls her eyes and doesn't even bother asking a follow-up question)

In my defense, she just happened to find the two I had missed picking up (and through some miracle, the kids missed eating) hiding alongside the fridge, so it's not like I just left the whole bag dumped all over the floor.

After all, they're mostly hers and I wouldn't want to call attention to how many I've eaten already.

Clutteropolis

You know you need to start shaping up in the housecleaning department when a 4-year-old who's as oblivious and messy as any other comes into the kitchen, where you've just loaded the dishwasher before clearing and wiping the counter (and everything!), and he suspiciously asks, "Why's it so clean in here??!"

Let me clarify that his threatened tone seemed to indicate this was somehow a well-established sign that we would be dropping him off at the orphanage later that afternoon.

You might be thinking, "But Dan, I thought you rode the OCD dragon, and thus would have a spotlessly clean house for us to be jealous of?" Well, I assure you that my current roommates douse themselves in dragon repellent daily, so I am easily outmatched versus the controlled amount of the Demon Power I allow to seep through the pressure valve. This is not a force to be easily unleashed and recaged, before you suggest that I let it out to play for a week or so and then go back onto a strict maintenance system.

When living alone or otherwise having complete control over a space, I just keep things in balance by reminding myself frequently that perfection is not possible-- my ideal living area would look pretty unremarkably normal to the untrained eye. I don't like to Clean with a capital C because things can get out of hand for me easily, so I prefer to just live neatly so I don't really ever have to clean.

Moving is not helpful for this, and neither is living with people who just aren't wired this way. Not only do we have stacks of junk and half-filled boxes distributed throughout our house, dating back to just over a year ago when we moved here, but we've actually moved backwards by adding to the collection.

When school ended in June, we were blessed with the arrival of everything that would normally fill a classroom serving 15 special-needs pre-teenagers and the two adults teaching them, plus all the many assorted things that had been disappearing from our house over the course of 9 months.

And the blindsiding left hook to go along with that uppercut is the puppy that followed the other stuff home-- crap from retiring teachers desperate to lighten their own loads* at the expense of anyone naive** enough to do it for them.

A minor sample of the kind of thing we're left with, in addition to the usual boxes of unnecessary toys, old magazines, and if-I-knew-what-was-in-them-I'd-be-obligated-to-put-it-all-away, is as follows:

• Boxes with 20 copies of the same questionably-useful books.
• An assortment of 30-year-old Tupperware bowls with no lids.
• Bags of old coffee mugs/potted plants (mold is a plant, right?).
• Milk crates filled with three-hole punches and other desk junk, inexplicably including four (yes, four) staplers of various shapes and sizes (always advisable with a toddler in the house).
• Half a box of "ladies" shaving cream samples, for the hairier children in school.
• A bunch of stupid signs and posters with cartoon characters trying to teach me things I already know.

All I can say is at least as far as this goes, I'm glad school has started again, because I've finally gotten most of this stuff out of the house now. However, the resulting empty boxes combined with our usual piles still blew the phone repairman's mind yesterday when I insisted to him that we had been living in this very same apartment with a working phone for over a year, give or take a couple of his company's screwups.

All I can say, upon reflection, is that somebody really needs to straighten things up around here. Whatever happened to my live-in maid service?


* Don't think for a second that I blame them for this, nor that J- won't be doing the same thing someday.

** Whenever the universe calls for naivete, you must know that we will be there. You can sleep soundly tonight and all nights hence, knowing that we will always answer this call and stumble foolishly into harm's way.

Conan the Ungrateful

One thing you have to adjust to when you become a parent is the complete lack of appreciation for what is essentially your indentured servitude. Whenever you get too down about it, though, just remember how much you enjoyed yourself as a kid living on the other side of the coin.

In case you weren't blessed with such luck, I guess all I can say is Tough Nuts, man. That's just how the ball bounces.

Case in point: Recently, I was taking advantage of naptime by trying to catch up on several weeks' worth of episodes of Conan O'Brien on our DVR, when D- wandered out of his room. He sat next to me on the couch, as transfixed by the TV as he usually is when allowed to watch.

Then, remembering what had occupied at least 5 full minutes of my time before I could physically move across the room to sit down, I took the opportunity to keep him from becoming too spoiled* by pointing out that I had done him a big favor while he was sleeping.

Me: Did you see? I cleaned up all the toys for you.

D- (absentmindedly, without even turning his head from the TV): What toys?

Me: (audible shudder of resigned frustration)


* And to sharpen my future skills as a grandmother.

My pity party: What did you bring me?

Let me start off by winning you over to my side: I cleaned the toilet the other day. Voluntarily. Just because it needed to be done.

I believe this deserves some kind of formal recognition, and I'm sure you agree. Granted, for most people, this might not be especially remarkable, but J- and I got married at (barely) 21 and 22, respectively, so we started out living like carefree college kids, which we actually were until a few big Cares entered the picture (then we were just college kids).

We've never really had time since those days to make conscious changes to our lifestyle, beyond those forced on us by life's meandering path. Our normal cleaning strategy has long been just to not to, as they say. So doing something as significant as this makes me feel like we might soon have a real household, like real people, all because of me. I think that's worth at least an hour of videogames, an extra day to sleep in, and a week's worth of free lecture notes, don't you, dudes?

Actually, since J- is going to have to take some extra courses to complete her Illinois teaching certification (Maine doesn't require as much special ed coursework), she'll temporarily be a college kid once again. Maybe I can offer to write a term paper for her if she dusts something or washes the bathtub. There's got to be a first time for everything, right?*

Now that I'm sure you're almost fully in favor of my position, I'll add that I also have recently taken up making sure the kids vacuum pretty regularly, along with personally sweeping the kitchen and dining room. On one or more occasions, I've even mopped and wiped our counters and stove. I mean, did you hear that? Mopped!! I will admit that I had little choice, what with all the cereal, milk, and urine, but still-- let's give credit where credit is due, please!

And now that I no doubt have much sympathy and support from across the country and indeed across the world**, I shall prepare to present my case to my wife. Wish me luck!


* In rereading this, I realized a footnote was in order to barely keep me out of potential trouble: I mean to say not that J- has never cleaned things, but specifically that neither of us has actually scrubbed our tub since we moved in last summer (there's a window in the shower that seems to keep things at bay), and we don't even own any type of dusting apparatus, technically, beyond some washcloths that might be employed for such a purpose. Does this make us bad people?

** Some of you regular visitors are from at least 6 different countries, and we have occasional guests from 23 total so far-- isn't that fun? Who knew that they had The Internets in other countries now? I should alert "our president" to this potential excuse to raise the Terror Alert Level!

Do the sweeping, Cinderelly

Apparently M- read my dishwasher post and is trying to pitch in to earn my love. Good girl!

Note: This wasn't my idea-- she grabbed the broom out of the closet when I opened it, as she often does, but this time she took off across the house actually trying to sweep. After taking this picture, I traded her for a more manageable hand broom, so she could push crumbs around the floor for a few minutes. I don't think she fully understood the purpose of this activity, but then it took me awhile, too.