- An abandoned diaper in the corner of the hallway.
- In fact, many Pull-Ups littered around the house, most of them worn for a day and still dry. I count 4 Dora the Explorer Pull-Ups that have been rejected in favor of Hello Kitty underwear when my back was turned.
- The 2 drawers in my dresser that are normally empty, stuffed with all the dirty clothes off of my floor moments before the baby-sitter arrived.
- Bottles of wine. One that was opened when I had a friend headed over for dinner, discovered to be bad and reluctantly abandoned (thrown out? No. Set behind the sink, that purgatory where troublesome dishes wait until I can give myself a pep-talk and then scrub them clean). I then unsuccessfully attempted to open the only other bottle of wine in my house. In a series of escalating failures, various utensils were pulled out to try their mettle against the stubborn wine bottle, each less suited for the actual job than the one before, leaving the kitchen littered with cork confetti. Don’t worry, the story ends happily. My wonderful friend managed to open the bottle of wine, pour me a glass and put Davy in the bathtub while ignoring the baby-potty that my 2.9 year old is clearly too old to be using, but which still graces the middle of the bathroom (there may have been a tiny bit of pee in said baby toilet). And the kingdom rejoiced.
- Dog kennel: dragged next to the bookshelf the t.v. resides on. Perched on the kennel is my sister’s Play Station 3 and also Jason’s XBOX 360, with wires overflowing from the back of the consoles like some 80’s super computer. Guys, my brother has Game of Thrones, Season 2 on Blue-Ray, what was I supposed to do?
- An empty Chik-Fil-A nugget box under the couch, the only evidence of D’s entire dinner that was consumed by Kirby when our backs were turned.
- Hairballs on the carpet that I JUST vacuumed. Well the joke is on Kirby; he has no idea how little I care about ever vacuuming again.
- A toddler awake until 10pm. Not once. Not twice, no sir. These past 10 days, this toddler has been up until 10pm 10, I tell you, 10 out of 10 nights.
- My child, playing with toys. Quietly. Happily. For so long that I literally (do I say that often?) became alarmed that she had managed to leave the house without me realizing it. Instead of finding her thumbing it down the road, she was sitting still in her room, playing with something. Unheard of. She was doing a puzzle and using some kind of lego-connection thingys – clearly she is a genius and I’ve been aiming too low with the dolls and cooking toys and high heels. What? No, I didn't say high heels. You must have mis-read that.
- SONOFABISCUIT A DEAD ROACH RIGHT NEXT TO ME THAT I LITERALLY JUST SAW.
- Clean laundry in the washer so long that it dried. Went in the dryer anyway.
I tried you guys, I really did. Last Saturday
I vacuumed EVERY room (basically). I ironed a shirt today. I packed my own
lunch so many times. I have pretty much kept up with the dishes, which is a
fishes-and-loaves-honest-to-goodness miracle.
You may think that this sounds so awful that
I can’t be serious, and that I’m just trying to be over-the-top in a kind of
“Ha-ha, She’s-So-Awful-She’s-Charming” plot to make you all adore me, but that
is only partially true. What is really
true is that I’m not good at… being tidy – and that I have a husband whose
unflagging willingness to keep up with the drudgery of dishes, laundry,
vacuuming and toilet-scrubbing makes me disbelieve in the existence of men who
don’t help around the house. Does. Not. Compute.
He’s been gone 10 days. Change the sheets?
Walk the dog? Tackle a project? No. Feed the child. Close the cabinets after I
open them. Load AND unload the dishes. Throw trash away. Wake up before the
girl does and drink a cup of coffee at home instead of at Starbucks. Bring my
own lunch to work instead of eating out (even if that means that I use an old
wine bag and toss in 2 rolls, an avocado and the salt and pepper shakers,
whole).
This is how completely Jason gets me: he cut
the grass the day before he left, only he just BARELY cut it - by now it is actually quite long. On my drive home every day I have seen the neighbors
all responsibly watering their lawns, sprinklers ticking away. My lawn does not
need to be watered; my husband knows that asking me to water the lawn
in his absence is like asking a man dangling off the edge of a cliff
to conjugate a verb (credit for that delightful phrase goes to the non-delightful Walker Percy). Our grass, however, is so tall that the sun can't scorch the roots, and so it grows lush an wild. Tall enough that it can live without my attention, but just shy of earning me a letter from the Home Owner's Association. Just how I like it.
Water the lawn? No. Only the basics. Feed the
dog. Get $20 worth of gas at a time. Write a blog about how amazing my husband
is and the atrocities that took place in his absence. Only the essentials.
