Dusting Off Some "Me Time"

The weekend here was positively glorious. Sunny, with a gentle warm breeze, sapphire blue skies dotted with whipped cream clouds, and my favorite temperature. 82 degrees. Surely you're not surprised that I have a favorite temperature?

Mac Daddy took the boys to the park to play some baseball Saturday morning. They gathered their gear, a cooler of snacks (that I admit to checking on the sly to ensure Mac Daddy packed the right stuff), and sunblock, thanks to my nagging (no word on if that was actually applied). Hugs and kisses, smooch smooch goodbye. Off they went, downright dancing down the sidewalk. My three boys, to whom I owe all this dirt and noise.

And then I clutched the powder room pedestal sink to keep from falling to my knees onto the cheap plastic stool and wept. Fat monsoon tears that I didn't even bother to wipe away. I gripped the sink to keep myself from giving in to whim and bashing the weathered pewter mirror in front of me. I stifled the bellowing scream bubbling up in my gut and let a snarl escape instead, a rather unfulfilling impostor.

No park for me. No breeze was to grace my face. I stayed behind at home.

Ah, the house to myself. Just me. Unplugged and Twitter free. Illicit, decidedly un-kid-friendly lyrics cranking at rock star decibels on the iPod, hot, strong coffee in my favorite travel mug and another full pot in the French press.

And me, hair swept back in a blue bandanna fished out of the dress up box, tattered purple tank tank top, supremely comfortable baggy jersey knit shorts, not a lick of mascara. Just me.

And a dustpan.
Broom.
Mop.
Murphy's oil.
Vacuum.
Sponges.
Rags.
Toilet bowl brush.
Stainless steel polish.
Method cleaner.
Dustbuster.
And those damned yellow rubber gloves.

You see, the only "me time" I get in my house is when I'm cleaning. Forget what I said before, now I regret firing my cleaning lady. First of all, cleaning my house makes me utterly irascible, while having a clean house makes me deliriously jubilant. The stream of pee around the bathrooms, thanks to two little boys and one big man, with poor aim, is enough to make me gag. You should hear me yell when I catch Bird leaning back to pee so he can (somewhat) aim and watch Kim Possible at the same time. He misses. Every. Single. Time.

And then there's all the dust bunnies.
Hair.
Fuzz.
Crunched leaves, twigs, and other signs of nature.
Sticky floors.
Crumbs.
Dust.
Fingerprints.
Hand prints in the least expected spots.
Toothpaste goop.
And all the usual suspects.

I. HATE. To. Clean.

The proverbial silver lining is this: I am all by myself when I am cleaning. That alone makes it more bearable.

No one is there to tug on me. I can pee in peace, whether the door is shut or not (and for the record, I have no issues with aim). I can eat three popsicles in one sitting, one in every flavor. I don't mentally tally up the constant chorus of "Hey, Mommy" in my exploding head. I don't have to endure knock-knock jokes or the Dragon Tales theme song. I don't have lunches to prepare or LEGO fights to mediate or bottoms to wipe or time outs to impose. There is no whining, bickering, yelling. The banshees have left the building.

And I am alone.

Me time.

Problem is, me time is not the same as time for me.

I suddenly don't feel so guilty about ignoring my family all day Monday while I curled up in the rocking chair on the front porch, with the ceiling fans on so I too could feel a breeze in my hair, to indulge in Twilight.

Sometimes I miss my little one bedroom apartment on Excelsior Boulevard. The one where I had a God awful floral wallpaper border in my nauseously girly bedroom, battenburg lace curtains, umpteem throw pillows on my bed, two walk-in closets, a tiny balcony covered in AstroTurf, a wall of mirrors in the bathroom, my very own stereo, even though it was just a little Bose shelf unit, and wall-to-wall carpeting. The same apartment where my Sunday paper was stolen on a regular basis. The same apartment that smelled ever so faintly of a potion of cat piss, stale Swisher Sweets, and bleach. The same apartment where doing laundry in the basement required a chaperon. The same apartment where I was alone but never lonely. Alone. By myself. Doing whatever the hell I wanted.

When time was all about me.

Rubbers Again

My sons are wondering what I'm up to with rubbers on my hands. Check out Deep South Moms to find out why.

Christmas Clutter

I love Christmas. I love getting out the boxes of decorations from the attic. I love the story behind all our ornaments. I love the food. I love the excitement and anticipation in my boys' every move. I love the spirit, the fellowship, the merriment. But I hate the clutter.

Bows. Bags. Wrapping paper rolls unwinding all over the place. Tape, but never where and when I need it. Shipping boxes. Damn styrofoam peanuts (shame on companies that still use that stuff!). Greeting cards and those excruciating update letters. Pine needles. Baskets of fruit. Gingerbread houses. Elves on shelves. Bounty of cookies. Homemade paper plate crafts and pine cone ornaments. Candles. Bells. Invitations. Sticky egg nog cups. Advent calendar and the accompanying tiny ornaments. Vases of candy canes. Nutcrackers.

It's all driving me nuts.

I didn't inherit the decorating gene so my futile attempts at wrangling the wired ribbon, bows, greenery, and floral picks look like my son's kindergarten class threw a Whoville all nighter in my living room. I can't get anything to swag. The unsightly cords are plainly in sight. The bows are askew. The greenery droops. The garland sags. The lights flicker. The wreath slips every time I open the door. And falls when I close it. The shatter proof ornaments break. The berries are poisonous. The poinsettias turn brown. The tree teeters (and actually fell over last year). The embroidered stockings keep turning backwards. The train under the tree broke. Even the music skips.

Every year I practically study the pages of Southern Living and try to reinvent my dining table and mantle into a holiday bounty of decorations. I try so very hard. Every year I fail. I'm a pretty smart cookie. I can follow directions. I buy the stuff, trapsing through the aisles at my local garden shop and AC Moore. But I can't set a holiday table scape for the life of me. I sure wish Sandra Dee were my best friend.

So all the clutter is giving me a headache. What's more, it's making me feel incompetent. I love Christmas decorations. In other people's homes.

Cross posted at Deep South Moms.

Room to Play.

We used to live in a house a tish smaller than the one we are in now. Once a friend's daughter came over, looked around befuddled, and asked, "Where is Bird's playroom?" We were aghast that a three year old expected all kids to have a playroom. Mac Daddy, without missing a beat, grandly gestured, waving both arms a la Vanna White, and declared, "This whole place is his playroom." Gotta love that sarcastic sense of humor. We've never had off-limits rooms for our kids. As neat as I am, I still allow toys anywhere...as long as they're picked up, natch.

Well, now we actually have a playroom, albeit small. There's plenty of room to play race cars, Spider Man, chef, knights,and camping adventure. There's plenty of room for all four of us to lie on the rug and have tickling, laughing fits. There's plenty of room to build with Legos, Kapla blocks, and Lincoln Logs all at once. It is a room that would make GE proud: Imagination at work.

I recently went to an acquaintance's house with Deal for a playdate (a word that I cannot believe is really, truly in my vernacular now!). The playroom was so Pottery Barn perfect that I could hardly function. The giant letters spelling the kids' names adorned one wall. The requisite train table had a track so intricate that even Deal didn't feel the urge to wreck it in one fell swoop. There was a mini bouncy house (a bouncy house, I tell you!), a slide (yes, inside!), a couple upholstered armchairs, a desk, a table with four tiny little chairs, and a giant hooked rug with the alphabet coming to life in the form of bugs and flowers. And by the all the furniture was hand painted. I can only imagine how nauseatingly perfect the master bathroom was.

Talk about making a girl feel inadequate. I was never at ease the whole morning, and could never let loose enough to engage in real conversation and even try to make a new friend. I'm pretty sure we won't be invited back. Was it shame? Jealousy? Envy? Was I internally tsk tsking at the garishness of it all (for a 1 and 3 year old, mind you)? Was I simply astounded that people actually catch Pottery Barn fever? A little of it all, I suppose.

I'm not kidding you when I tell you that my brother and I played with Tupperware when we were kids. And guess what? So do Bird and Deal. It's amazing the music we can make with some fridge stackers and wooden spoons. Bird and Deal's favorite thing in the whole world is the Costco box we bring the goods home in. I am blown away at what their vivid, colorful, magical imaginations can do with that box. Trash to most of us. It becomes a fishing ship, a rocket, a fighter jet, a puppet stage, a puppy kennel. No fancy pants playroom would have any bearing on my boys and their precious Costco box. If anything, the over decorated space would thwart their energy and creativity, hampering their imagination.

Afterall, Bird and Deal would be waaaaayyy happier in a real barn than in a catalog still life.

Dishin' the dirt.

Though I am a confirmed neat freak, my house is currently dirty. Really dirty. As in, call in Kim and Aggie. I'm ashamed of its condition, so don't be offended if I haven't invited you over for a while. It's not messy, cluttered, or in disarray. Of course the house is still orderly. A Virgo can only let things go so far. You wouldn't even notice the dirt until you pulled up a seat and realized you were stuck to it. I have a hunch that some AWOL Peeps are hiding amidst the cushions.

But trust me, my house is dirty. The Ty-D-Bol Man needs to unpack his bags and stay a while. The dust bunnies are, well, doing what real live bunnies do. All over the place. I'm thinking about collecting them to knit Christmas stockings for the whole family. There is a crunchiness underfoot upon entrance from any of the three doors into my home. Who am I kidding? The crunchiness underfoot is everywhere. You'd be hard pressed to find a speck of floor not covered in dried mud, crunched up leaves, grains of rice, crumbles of scone, or strands of hair (mine and the cat's). Pebbles of Tidy Cat leave the hallway far from tidy. Deal has been potty training, so the random sprays of pee have quadrupled. That's not even counting the poop he left on the toilet seat this morning. How the hell does that happen?!

I'm not even including the oh, 30 or so flies (the fat, lazy Tom Arnolds of the insect world), that Mac Daddy killed in Bird's room today. I guess the dead squirrel stuck between the walls is finally decaying. BLECH. ICK. YUCK. GAG. The mere thought of it makes me want to pull back my hair and let my dinner fly. Except the toilet is too gross to even toy with the idea of getting anything but my ass close to it.

And the dust. The damn dust. It's pollen season here so there's a green film coating every surface in the area code. The simple act of opening the screen door to let some fresh air in leaves a green powder all over the hardwood floors. The house doesn't stink like boys yet, but it's close. No amount of orange spray will mask the sty that my family is living in right now.

I suppose my family is taking this blog's name to heart. At least there are only two more days until the cleaning people come. No use tackling it now, right? I mean, what's the use? I'm sure those two days will fly right by.

Tell me something I don't know!

You must read this before you continue.

Is this really what researchers need to spend their grant dollars doing? The next thing you know some fancy pants PhD from MIT is going to tell me that the latest research shows that college fraternity parties encourage binge drinking among 19-year old boys or that the more often a teenage LiLo wannabe wears words across her ass the less likely she is to get a BA in Economics.

Of course men create more housework for women! The male researcher should have just asked his wife. Or his mother. In this case, a focus group of one would have been sufficient to draw conclusions. Here's my favorite quote from Frank, "And the situation gets worse for women when they have children." No shit. Allow me to gather myself and readjust since falling over backwards from my Aeron.

Let's start with the little details of oh, say BIRTH. We do the hard work (as they say, it ain't called labor for nuthin'). The problem is that labor doesn't end when the nurse lays that writhing miracle in your arms. The fun just begins. We get to wear a diaper for weeks while trying to feed a child who gnaws on our nipples for hours a day. And never mind the juggling of other little ones running around, remembering to take the Lean Cuisine out of the microwave so we can get some much needed nourishment to keep the milk flowing, change some diapers, throw in laundry, and find time to sneak in a shower. Oh yeah, and then we're supposed to pick up our husband's strewn shoes and socks and briefcase to clear a path to the stairs and help him find his keys that he refuses to hang on the conveniently located hook by the front door.

Harumph. Frank, may I suggest you go research something more meaningful, like why women still think Republicans are helping our cause.