I got home late last night after a soccer game. This morning, I staggered into the kitchen groggy and aching. Ahhh, the dishes were all done; a hot cup of chai tea was waiting for me on the counter. Two out of three kids were up AND dressed. Nice.
The table, however, had so much post-supper remains on it I wondered if the kids actually got any food into their mouths. As they were getting set to eat their breakfast, they grabbed their bowls headed for the table, paused briefly and did a quick U-turn to the island. Clearly, even they could not tolerate the previous days’ accumulation of grits.
In desperation, I enlisted the help of the dog; “Abby come”, I said, then I ran my bare hand across one end of the table scattering a smorgasbord of food remnants onto the floor. She looked at the floor, and looked at me, “Go ahead”, I encouraged; she seemed to shake her head in disbelief and then went to the family room, weaved around the Barbies, Lego, and discarded clothing and lay down. I’m on my own, I thought. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the vacuum cleaner, which (thankfully) had not been put away from two days ago. I fired ‘er up and sucked that table clean. Oooo, that felt good! I continued on with the stovetop, the countertops, and all the utensil drawers. Then carried on to the lunch bags, veggie drawer, fruit drawer and microwave. It was so quick, so efficient, I was sure that I was not the only mother who had sucked at motherhood!
Later the same day, Lauren asked me to help her find a lost blue pencil crayon. She was working at the craft table that butts up against the couch. So logically, I moved the couch. Another amazing collection of goodies awaited me. I couldn’t tell you how long it had been since that couch had been moved – but I found the lost padding from one of my breast-feeding bras, and my baby is turning eight in March! More surprising though was the family of mice that had moved in and managed to build an energy efficient condo complex just using the debris that we had unwittingly discarded down there. Who knew?
Cleanliness may be next to Godliness, but we all know that Godliness is next to impossible!
