Skip to main content

The house elf has abandoned me

Argh, it's one of THOSE days.
I saw this day coming. It wasn't sneaky. This day wanted me to know it was coming. This day wanted to see the sourness creep across my face. My distaste for this day simply provided fuel for it, causing it to grow, become monstrous.
I didn't sign up for this day (actually, it was in the fine print), and yet here it is, a day all stay-at-home parents must face.
This day is Clean-the-house Day.
And I hate it.
___

Let me list all the reasons why I hate this day (as if I need to because I know you hate this day too):
  • Dusting.
  • Sweeping.
  • Mopping.
  • Dusting.
  • Toilet cleaning.
  • Tub cleaning.
  • Dusting.
  • It's hard to keep Willow entertained (she hates dusting too).
  • Sink scrubbing.
  • Dusting.
  • Dusting.
  • Dusting.
I think I've delivered a solid argument to why I hate Clean-the-house Day.
And I hate the day even more because it was forced onto me (by big corporations, I'm sure of it).
You see, back in the day when I was a normal everyday working husband, I left all this gritty stuff to the house elf.
But the house elf left when I started staying home. I waited for him to show up, but he never did.
I liked what the house elf did, keeping a clean house, but he up and left, leaving me, ME, to do most the dirty work (I say "most" because my wife occasionally points out stuff I'm not doing, and it's always news to me ... that house elf was a thorough fellow).
Oh, well.
The day is here.
The house elf has abandoned me.
It's all up to me to keep this place clean.
Or is it?
Willow is scooching around pretty good nowadays.
Maybe if I strap a dust cloth to her ...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

With baby comes packing (and a lot of it)

Willow, Che and I are traveling to see the grandparents, aunts, cousins and Mos (or is it Moes or is it Mo's or is it Moses?) in Henderson, Tenn., this weekend. And that brings up one of the big differences between being a couple without kids and being a couple with kids: packing for travel (they even have an app for that, God bless us packing-weary parents). Back in my pre-child days, packing hardly mattered, probably taking up 1 zillionth of a tenth of a percent of my brain capacity to do (six days equals six days of socks and underwear plus some T-shirts, some shorts, a pair or two of pants, put on some shoes, throw in some toothpaste, and I was off). That's hardly the case anymore. Take, for example, if you have a spit-up-prone baby. Do you take two burp clothes, four, eight or, maybe, 16? Better take 24. And how many diapers do you take? Or wipes? Do I need to take baby medicine? Is it going to be cold or warm or cold and warm or warm and hot then ... AACK!!! You get t...

Willow hones her friend-making skills

Up until now Willow has enjoyed the company of other tots her age only in the sense that where they are is where the fun and the toys are. That is to say she likes the toys and the gyms and the swings and if she has to be around these other toddlers, so be it. That's with kids her own age. She LOVES older kids, but they don't care much for her (other than "she's a baby," and Willow can't keep up with them, though she tries). Her older cousin, Rett, for example, hung the stars and moon in her opinion, so she'll just about do anything he does, including cozying up with him on the chair to watch a movie. And he does like her more than the typical older kid does. But as far as all the toddlers and babies roughly in Willow's age range, she doesn't have much use for them. She's not mean to them. She'll let them take a ball from her hand, for example (as some say, she plays well with others). But I can tell you, most definitely, she just doesn...

Summer zips on by

I guess it's official. This morning, we witnessed the kiddos hopping on school buses and heading to school. That marks the end of summer, I suppose, and the end of summer seems to come a little earlier every year (even though the actual warmness of the weather keeps creeping later and later; are we going to have winter this year, anyone?). Call me silly, but I like to think of the end of summer as that day on the calendar that falls in the middle of September, after my birthday (my birthday, Sept. 16, is in summer, but it has never, ever felt that way even though I know it's always hot on my birthday). This marks my 39th summer if you count that first one I was born during in 1974, and I'm sure many of them seemed really long or really short depending on how old I was. For me, it seemed like the summers of my childhood lasted FOREVER. Now it seems like they zip by. In a flash. Especially this one. It's been a busy one, filled with lots of travels, family visits and...