I Am Offended. Except Not.

At our house, the folding of laundry is a job of the minions. And I’ll say first off that the chore is not spread out evenly among the minions. It’s more like, “You there. Fold the laundry and put it away.”

This summer two of the minions are working (they are doing summer research). That leaves only two minions folding scads of laundry. And since they aren’t paid, they have a communist approach—do the work with little care as to the results.

This led to the following scene at breakfast.

Husband: “You know, the laundry has become a total crap shoot. I get all kinds of clothes that aren’t mine.”

Working Minion (female): “I’m always getting other people’s laundry. Especially mom’s.”

Folding Minion (male): “One pair of pink undies looks like another. I can’t tell the difference.”

WM (conceding the point): “Yeah, but it’s not the underwear. You gave me mom’s dorky shorts.”

FM: “Hmm. True.”

Me, looking up from what I was reading: “Hey, I don’t have dorky shorts.”

WM: “You totally have dorky shorts. Remember those shorts you bought the other day to wear with your swimsuit.”

Me, knowing I bought them because they were cheap even though they were ugly and didn’t fit well: “Okay, those are dorky.”

WM: “You do have one pair of cute jeans.”

Me, feeling better: “Thanks…wait a minute…I have five pairs of jeans. Are you saying the others are lame?”

WM, with a teasing smile: “The jeans with the double buttons are so cute. I love when the boys put them in my laundry pile.”

I guess the lesson to be learned here is that one day in five I’m cool. And the rest, I’m dorky. Hmmm. I’m good with that.

Fashion Jeans

Yesterday, Ariel brought me a stack of clothing. She dropped it onto my dresser and announced, “I see the boys have been folding laundry again.”

(Notice the word “boys” is italicized. That’s because she is no longer allowed to use her favorite word “dweebs.” The boys filed a protest about her word choice in referring to them, i.e. they didn’t like being called “dweebs.” Ariel filed a counter-protest—“dweebs” is an endearment, which denotes the love that she feels for them. The judge, me, laughed derisively, though I told her it was a good try.)

Back to the laundry issue.

Me: “How do you know that the boys folded?”

Ariel, after unfolding a pair of jeans that had been mistakenly included with her clean laundry: “Note the straight leg, high-cut waist. This screams I am a home-school mom.”

Me (Obviously, she’s confusing homeschool-ness with 90s fashion, but that’s not the point): “Those jeans are comfortable and slimming. Besides I have two pairs of low-cut flared jeans.”

Ariel: “One pair was a hand-me-down.”

Me (realizing she’s right) “I bought the other pair.”

Ariel: (She says nothing, but raises an eyebrow—she was with me when I bought them and knows that the only reason I purchased them was because I was too cheap to spend $40 for the home-school mom/90s version.)

Me (knowing she has yet another point): “I read that regular-waisted straight-leg jeans are back in style.”

Ariel (conceding my point): “Yeah. That’s really depressing.”

The Son of Samson

My husband and I have been married for almost 21 years. That’s a lot of time—in fact, I was married at 21 so I’ve been married nearly half my life. You’d think I’d be used to all my husband’s endearing (and not so endearing) quirks.

We’ve learned to deal with the clothes-on-the-floor habit. For me, clothes on the floor is the visual equivalent to fingernails on a chalkboard. For Calvin, it’s an old way of life. Normally, all clothes go into the hamper, but occasionally there’s a small pile on his side of the bed where I can’t see it. When I ask him why, he responds, “When I was growing up, my mom was always so busy that I didn’t want to put my clothes into the hamper unless they were completely dirty.” I nod my head. “But, for me, dearest, if clothing lays on the floor it’s only getting wrinkled in which case it has to be washed, dried, and ironed again anyway.” He says, “My mom didn’t iron.” “Yes, sweetheart, but I do.” Then, the clothes begin finding their way back into the hamper again. I can live with this.

However, there is another habit (one I can’t blame on his parents). Calvin breaks things. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate his ability to move anything. He can pick up a hide-away bed couch and carry it on his shoulders. He can rip siding off a house with his bare hands. Honest, I’ve seen him do both these things. And, in Hamden when there was a huge boulder that the trustees couldn’t move, Calvin picked it up and moved it out of the way. This is all good.

There is a down side. He doesn’t know his own strength. He broke the hydraulic support on the treadmill. One day I was trying to lower the running surface of our fold-up treadmill, I found I couldn’t budge it. After time spent inspecting the machine, I found that the hydraulic arm that helps lift the heavy running board up and down was completely bent. When Cal had last used the treadmill, he obviously raised the board without remembering to lower the incline.

Me: Light of my Life, when you ran the treadmill yesterday, did you have any trouble getting the board back up?
Cal: It stuck a bit, but I gave it a push and it went right up.
Me: That “sticking” was a solid steel hydraulic arm that is now bent completely out of shape.
Cal: No. That can’t be.
Me: Check it out, Dude.
Cal (after checking it out): Whoa.
Me: Yeah.

In fact the situation is so bad that the children say to each other, “Don’t ask Daddy to fix it—he’ll break it.”

Yesterday, Calvin came back from a visitation.
Cal: I broke my glasses.
Me (imagining a screw needs to be replaced): Let me fix it.
Cal (pulling the multiple pieces out of his shirt pocket): That’s not going to work.
Me: How did you do that?
Cal: I was playing with Joseph’s dog so I put my glasses in my shirt pocket because I didn’t want to get them scratched.
Me: Right, the dog’s a little terrier, so how did they break?
Cal: I squeezed the dog.
Me: Cal, one of your lenses is broken into three pieces. Is the dog dead?
Cal (laughing): No. I’m not sure how it happened. I just held the dog and flexed my arms.
Me: Oh.
Cal: Are you going to blog about this?
Me: Oh, yeah. If I’ve married the son of Samson, I will blog about this.
(BTW, did you notice I found a way to blame my in-laws.)

Call the CDC

I hate being sick. Now I’m sure most people don’t like being sick—although our kids love laying in our bed with a down comforter over them and watching DVDs until their eyes melt and run down their cheeks. If that weren’t enough, I come and bring them delectable treats like Sprite (the kids never get to drink soda) and crackers. Okay, crackers aren’t exciting, but when you’re sick they are. But, you get the picture, being sick can sort of be fun when you’re a kid. Okay, okay, let me put in a disclaimer here before I get all kinds of comments from my children…yes, I do make them do schoolwork if their fever isn’t over 100. But I only make them do reading and math. Don’t gasp. Math is easy for them—if they had to choose a subject to do, it would be math.

Back to the subject. As an adult, especially a mom, there is no redeeming value to being sick. You lie on the couch and watch your house fall apart. It doesn’t take long before the laundry is spilling out of the hampers. Right now, I see a black sock in the middle of the living room floor. Why is it there? Who knows? I find it hard to believe that no one in the past 24 hours has noticed that sock. My basket of ironing, which is supposed to be done on Thursday is, even now, reproducing. Have you ever noticed that when you get behind in ironing, even one day behind, the seven shirts that need to be ironed become 14? I’m convinced that there’s a “rabbit gene/jean” in the ironing basket.

I don’t even want to talk about the kitchen. Though, of course, I must point out that the kids have been doing the dishes. But no one seems to notice that the counters are oases of germs, bacteria, and food filth. All right, Ariel did wipe the counter last night, but the stove is still coated with brown burnt splotches, which apparently is the fault of Luke overspraying the Teflon pan and getting Pam all over the stove.

Speaking of Luke cooking, this morning I noticed him cooking his own high protein breakfast—bacon and eggs, which will be followed by a big bowl of cereal. But I noticed him using a metal spatula on a Teflon pan! I wanted to shout, “NO!” But it came out as a croak followed by a hacking cough.

Jacob and Matthew have their own response to my sickness. As soon as they hear I’m sick, they present me with arguments reasoning that it would be better for my health to let them skip school and play computer/Wii/games/read/do puzzles/etc., all day long. I give them my don’t-waste-what-little-cognitive-power-I-still-possess look, and they break out in peals of giddy laughter.

Also when I’m sick, Jezebel is bored. So, she decided to alleviate her boredom by chewing on the tassels of a table runner. Of course, she’s sly so I’ve never actually seen her do it. I’ve just seen bits of tassel on the floor. She also is fascinated by the smell of “cold.” Whenever my face is within range, she runs over and sniffs my nose. Big,wet doggie sniffs followed by a healing lick across the face.

In the vein of full-disclosure, I must admit that I’m not the best patient. I do get up and clean the stove when I should be lying down. And I cough, sneeze, smell like Vick’s Vapo-rub and run the vaporizer all day, which makes the inside our house like a swamp even though it's ten degrees outside. The problem is that I can’t take decongestants. Apparently, I’m sensitive to them, they make my hands shake, I have auditory hallucinations, they make my heart beat too fast (tachycardia) and I get chest pains.

Hopefully, I’ll be better soon. Calvin went to the store and bought me vitamin C and cranberry juice, which he sternly warned the kids, was only for mom to drink. But I’m beginning to suspect that this isn’t an ordinary cold. This is a hybrid virus, which resulted from the cross of a normal cold virus with a strain of basement-altered-sanitary-sewer-line-misery virus. Yep. That’s it. Better call the CDC.