The Case Of The Missing Underwear

I've been doing really well with my cleaning schedule.  It's nothing normal people would celebrate, but I am shouting from the rooftops. " You can come in my house, it's CLEAN!!"

Recently, my husband was informed of a last minute business trip.  The conversation went like this..
Him: (calling from work) "Hey, I have a meeting in 2 days"
Me: "Okay, is it a late meeting?"
Him: "No, it's in Chicago"

That afternoon, I reverted to my old panicky ways, asking him what he needed laundered for his trip.  I was delighted when I realized that everything was clean!  Wohoo, yay me!!

The next morning, my husband was working from home, he had a few phone meetings before he was getting picked up to go to the airport.  I was getting the kids ready for school when I heard the washing machine running.

I asked what he was washing and he said he needed underwear.  Thus began THE CASE OF THE MISSING UNDERWEAR (duh duh duh)  Let me explain.  There were a few things in our hamper, including a few pairs of his underwear.  All the clean clothes were put away, and yet besides the few pairs that he had in his drawer, there were no underwear to be found.

The obvious conclusion was that my son, who doesn't , at 13, always pay attention to what he's doing, probably took them and put them away with his stuff.  No luck there.  I thought perhaps I put them away in my drawer.  We have a closet organizer and our drawers are on top of each other, so they must be there!  Nope.

I have yet to find them.  I am assuming that I must have had them in my hand , gotten distracted and they are somewhere that makes no sense.  Well, that or The Underpants Gnomes from South Park ARE real.  It's a tough call.

If Loving You Is Wrong...

I love TV.

I really really love it.

I don't get much occasion to sit and watch hours of it, but catch me on a rainy weekend and I will get caught up in some 9-hour Teen Mom Marathon and I won't regret a second of it.

I'd like to think that I watch a good amount of what people would call "critically acclaimed" shows, enough to give me some credibility for having a good sense of humor and some intellect. "Mad Men", "Parks and Recreation" and "Downton Abbey" are all smart, intelligent and well crafted series, I appreciate all the hard work that goes into them.  However......

If you really want to know the truth  , I LOVE terrible TV.

There are shows I watch (or rather, record, since I can't seem to remember when anything is on, ever) that are just pure trash.  They offer nothing other than the chance for one hour to not have to worry about being a wife or mother, I just need to figure out if those crazy Manhattan elite are ever going to get their acts together, and would Chuck and Blair just work as a couple already?

There are shows I watch just to make me feel better about myself.  I'm talking to you "Dance Moms" and "Bridezillas".  I am amazed at how truly awful these people are, and though I probably shouldn't condone their behavior by watching, if I come across them in my channel flipping, I am hard-pressed to turn away.  Seriously, that Abby Lee Dance Company is the place where happy childhoods go to die.  I can't believe those people put up with her crap day after day. Psycho!

I love watching snippy people fix other people's lives.  Jeff Lewis, I love you.  Tabitha taking over things is pure gold.  I am someone who has a very hard time saying "no" and I love that these people have such confidence and just tell people what's what. 

My biggest guilty pleasure is any of the so called "Real" Housewives.  These people are so beyond "real" (and I'm not just talking about the plastic surgery) it's hilarious.  I take most reality TV with a grain of salt because it's hard to think that they just happened to capture you walking into a friend's house when there's already 7 cameras taking 7 different shots of you walking in, but it's so bad it's good.  I can't even really justify why I love it, it's just mindless and catty and almost like a modern day soap opera with bigger boobs and lots of drinking.

This may make it seem like I just sit around and watch TV all the time, but I really don't.  Luckily many of these shows are so bad, they don't require me to sit in front of the TV to get all the details.  I can be cleaning or organizing or getting other things done while they drone on in the background. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some terrible TV to watch.

Love Is A Battlefield

There's an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" where Ray and Deborah come back from vacation and leave a suitcase on the landing. 

There's a battle of wills for 3 weeks and it finally comes to a head when Ray has to travel again and takes his clothes in plastic grocery bags rather than move the suitcase.  Before he leaves he puts stinky cheese in it so that his wife will be forced to move it while he's gone.

For some reason, I LOVE this episode.  I think it so simply sums up the small battles that you go through as a married couple.  The arguments are simple, she thinks he should carry it in because she was the one who packed and will have to unpack it and do the laundry.  He thinks she should do it since she walks by it every day and he lugged it around while they were away.

The mother in law on the show takes the daughter in law to her house and shows her that there's a big fork and spoon hanging on her wall that is the result of a similar fight and then she says the words I love...

"Don't let a suitcase full of cheese be your big fork and spoon."

I think of this all the time when I find myself in a similar situation.  There are certain things that I totally think should be my husbands job, like car stuff and trash.  Then there are things that he thinks I should take care of, like everything else.  Ha ha ha. I'm kidding. Sort of.  I do take care of a lot of other stuff, but he helps out and pitches in when I need him to.

Our "big fork and spoon" is the trash.  I swear my family could win a trash stacking contest.  No one seems to be able to take the trash bag out.  They will stack and stuff it until it can take no more.  The only time my husband takes the bag out of the kitchen trash is on Friday, which is garbage day. 

What happens next makes me crazy.  Instead of putting a new bag in the trash can.  He takes a plastic grocery bag out and hangs it on my oven handle.  I don't get it!!  I will admit, the way our trash can is, you have to place the bag around a plastic ring and then put it in the trash can, then put on the lid.  The trash bags are literally a step away.  The grocery bags are at least 10 steps away and then you have to walk back to hang it on the oven.

It makes me crazy on a weekly basis, but instead of being stubborn and making this a bigger deal than it needs to be (you know , like dedicating a whole blog to it) I have accepted that on Friday mornings I will come downstairs to see this......

 and this.....

Literally

I am a very literal person.

Once when I was baking with my sister and my mother (I should probably tell you that I was a CHILD, but it will not stop my mom and sister from laughing hysterically) I was in charge of making some cookies. I read very carefully from the recipe and followed the instructions. Once the ingredients were in the bowl, I went to the sink to wash my hands. I then began rolling up my sleeves and dug my hands into the bowl.

My mother exclaimed, "What are you doing!?"

I turned to her and said, "It says mix by hand!"

The rest is history.

I still love a recipe, I think it's why I like baking more than cooking. My husband has the ability to take, "a little of this and a little of that" and make something pretty yummy, but I can only thrive with a recipe.

To prove the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, I'll share this with you.

One day, we were cleaning up the house as a family and my son came and asked me what he could do next.

I told him that it would be a big help if he could take the clothes out of the washing machine and put them in the dryer. I had to give a brief explanation of how to run the dryer, but he seemed to get it and off he went.

I was doing a few things and some time had passed, I didn't see my son or hear the dryer running.

I yelled out, "How's it going in there?"

His reply? " I'M SOAKED!"

I'm not even sure how I processed this information, I'm pretty sure my feet just started running.

I walked in to see my son putting soaking wet clothes into my dryer. His sleeves were soaked, the front of his clothes were soaked, it was a mess.

Apparantly, I had forgotten to shut the lid when I ran the wash and so the clothes were just sitting in water. I yanked the clothes out of the dryer, yelled for my husband to grab every towel in a 10 mile radius and begged to the appliance gods that I wouldn't be dryer shopping the rest of the weekend.

By some miracle, we got all the water out, we let the dryer sit for a few days and it's been fine.

My son, literally did what I asked him. Should he have known better? Probably. I was definitely flustered and frustrated at the time, but it's now become a funny family story that we tell over and over.

King Of Pain

"There's a slippery spot on the floor today.....It's the same old spot as yesterday...."

This "song" has been running through my head all day.

At the bottom of our stairs, there is a slippery spot.  I don't know what it was from.  There wasn't any apparent spill or furniture polish residue, but it was slippery none the same.

Here's the thing.  I was not the one who first noticed it, I was the only one who didn't slip on it.  I was the one who decided to see how long these fools I live with would continue to slip on it before they did something.

I kid you not, my daughter slipped 5 times, my son about the same, my husband slipped so badly he scraped his arm on the corner of a little table we keep in the foyer.

NOT ONE of them thought to try and wipe the floor or maybe ask me if there was some way they could fix it.  They just continued to fall and yell and complain.  I said nothing.

This morning my daughter just all out slipped and fell and I think she scared herself more than she hurt herself, but there were tears just the same.

Once she was off to school, I decided maybe concussions weren't the lesson I wanted anyone to learn and I grabbed a sponge and a little soap and voila! , magically the floor was fine again.  Yeah, it was that easy.  I don't have a masters in slippery floor spots or anything.

I wonder how long it will take them to notice?

Cleanin' Out My Closet (A.K.A. "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie")

Have we all read the story about the adorable little mouse that when given a cookie, keeps getting distracted by other things only to end up back at the cookie?  Well then, you know exactly what it's like when I clean out a closet.

I have a fairly decent sized walk-in closet in my bedroom.  (Well technically off of my bathroom that's attached to my bedroom).  Since I don't have an extensive wardrobe and neither does my husband, the closet lends itself to being able to store other things as well.

This basically means that a lot of clutter and madness ends up in there and I have officially had it.

I decided that this week (that's right, I said WEEK)  I would be devoted to cleaning and organizing this thing once and for all.  It's Wednesday and I have created more of a mess than I had in the first place.

Here's how it went down.

First , I decided to put all our old mismatched photo albums and boxes of pictures into nice new matching albums that I purchased....two years ago.  So I had to take them all out of the shelf in my closet and they are now in piles on my dining room table.

Then, I unearthed a ton of frames that I no longer use.  I decided that I should "Nate Berkus*" those bad boys with some spray paint and give them new life, but it's cold and I can't do it now, so I guess I'll get a bin out of the basement and set those aside for a great spring day.

Now, I have a giant empty shelf in the closet that I need to put something on, so I contemplated moving our printer and shredder in there since the printer is wireless and we are limited on space in our bedroom/office.  I was just about to move everything when I realized that we have no outlets in the closet.  Stop. Call husband on realities of getting outlets.  Sigh, possible, but it will have to wait. 

Next, I decide that even though it's not a finished basement, now that the kids are getting older, I think I can move most of my craft stuff downstairs.  My daughter really likes using it and we have a spare table that we can set up down there and I can actually leave projects out while I'm working on them.

I head down to the basement and spend some time clearing an area to put my closet craft stuff in and I get completely distracted by other things that aren't organized down there.

Is it any wonder why it's Wednesday and it literally looks like I managed to clear one shelf in my closet while the rest of my house exploded?

This blog may be a glaring expose' into adult ADD, but I know eventually I will get back to the cookie....er..I mean closet.  I could totally go for a cookie though.

*Using "Nate Berkus" as a verb is totally acceptable.