Some Assembly Required
Want a messy house? Have a Kid. It's really that simple. A family of racoons might work too.
Every once in a while my photos app will prompt me to look at an old photo that was taken pre-child. Something like this one:
And of course, the first reaction is to see how beautiful BW was back in the day1
The second thing I think when this photo pops up in my feed is:
OMG LOOK HOW CLEAN THE HOUSE IS!
All the dishes put away, not a thing on the countertops - it’s like a dream.
And then you wake up and go downstairs and you take status of the current situation of just one corner of our living room:
So..yeah.
Today the Amazon man brought a little end table for BW’s office for her to put her coffee cup on because fancy Apple Computers and cold coffee don’t mix well and it’s best to keep them seperated.
Of course, the table required some assembly but it wasn’t the worst thing we ever put together. With some company from the dog and BW I managed to get it assembled in about half an hour which is not bad considering I am sitting on a footstool while balancing 3 pieces at the same time on my lap while trying to not drop the screw I have balanced on the end of the screwdriver.
The child realized that there was something going on downstairs and pulled herself away from her tablet long enough to investigate. She saw the styrofoam bits and padding and made a bee-line right to it.
“NOOOO!!!” , We both sung in unison because you all know too well what a pain in the ass little pieces of styrofoam are to clean up. “Leave the styrofoam alone”, we told her.
Then BW and I went and took her little table upstairs to get her setup with it.
The child - being my ever obedient offspring - could not help herself and just had to have it.
She could not resist the styrofoam.
I could not resist crying when I saw the mess downstairs. There was styrofoam in my ball cap, some small boxes and of some of it became art boards for her artwork, which is great - but it’s styrofoam.
As you know: this shit gets everywhere and is impossible to sweep up.
Have you ever tried to sweep styrofoam? You’re not really making headway - you just end up pushing it around the room. Then you think you will get the vacuum cleaner and our vacuum cleaner sucks on a good day (not in the way it was designed) and it chokes at the sight of any hard to handle dirt.
I take apart the vacuum and clean out the dog hair and styrofoam flakes and try again. This second attempt works a little better but while I am cleaning up the tiny little foam bits that seem to stick to everything but the thing you want them to stick to, in the corner of my eye I see the child walking away with a big piece of styrofoam under her arm.
“Where are you going with that?”, I ask
“ I need this”, she tells me.
“No you don’t. Listen to your Dad”, I tell her.
Hoping to see a clean house one day again,
TH and Co.
Not that she isn’t now. I have to be careful here with my words here - one small misstep and I’m sleeping outside.