It seems as if Roz and I are always cleaning and picking up stuff only to turn around to see everything we just put away back out and on the floor again. I have my own little category 5 disaster maker, his name is Coleman, he turns 2 next week. He’s quick, agile, destroys with much glee and without mercy. This is just a phase right. We can entice him to pick up after himself, but only if we turn it into some sort of game. In other words, there has to be something in it for him. So some days we just leave it, there are toys strewn all about, but sometimes it’s not just toys.
On the floor in my living room/office/dining room/playroom/ is a hard little gnarled bit of something stuck to the floor. It won’t sweep up, I’ve tried 3 or 4 times, it just won’t move. And there are too many other tasks to be tackled. To deal with it I’d have to get on my hands and knees with brillo or sponge or knife or jack hammer, and I can’t invest that kinda time right now. It could be raisin or maybe, I’ve stopped guessing, guessing scares me about the possibilities, it’s not emitting and odor, I don’t think.
A mother with too many children said to us recently, rice sweeps up easier after a couple days. I know it’s disgusting, but she’s right. Try and sweep up rice right away, it drags and smooshes and then you’ve got to get out the brillo or the jackhammer, but wait a couple a days, it moves cooperatively into the dustpan. Don’t judge me.
I could mop you say. Ha! Then I’d have to take out the mop and the bucket, that’s not so easy either, the mop it’s wedged between the wall and the refrigerator, all the way back, the handle is up against the wall and the mop part is stuck to the ground, because it was still wet when we put it away last time. Then there’s the bucket, underneath the sink. Filled with sponges and brillo pads and a spackling knife. So say I was industrious enough to get the mop and the bucket out. Where would I fill the bucket. Can’t do it in the sink, there are dishes there, there are always dishes in the sink. Waiting to we move to the bigger apartment with the bigger kitchen before we get a dishwasher so in the meantime, there are always dishes in the sink. I could fill up the bucket in the bathtub, then I’d have to spend an hour moving all of Coleman’s bath toys. Stop judging me.
We are just not from that time. We’re not from the time when women ironed sheets. Roz’s grandmother still irons her sheets. OK she’s 88 and she lives alone, so I guess she has the time now. But I can’t believe she was ironing sheets when she had a 2 year old. She had 3 daughters all under the age of 7 and she worked full time. I doubt very much that her sheets were ironed. But yet mothers and grandmothers always want to give you the impression that they had time to do everything when we were young, we were always clean, our clothes ironed, our rooms neat and tidy, the house spotless, meals served hot, delicious and on time. Yeah right.
Last week my mother chastised us because our Britta water pitcher had a little mold on it, or maybe there was a lot of mold. OK so it was something that needed to be addressed, I did, this week the house is filled with bottled water. Usually my mom doesn’t say anything, she’ll just clean it. Like when we come home from writing class, the kitchen floor has been moped. Maybe sheÂ’s the one who leaves the wet mop behind the refrigerator, because I don’t remember the last time either one of us used the mop, so ha! We are artists!! There are bigger fish to fry. I can’t be spending all my creative energy on gnarled bits of food stuck to the floor. Damn it I wish we had dog. He would have eaten it by now and all our problems would be solved.
It could be a blueberry.
