Why my house is a disaster area

At the end of last month, I went out of town for a few days, leaving my husband and children home. The house fared as well as could be expected, which is to say, it was still standing. To give credit where credit is due, the kitchen was clean (but then, no REAL meals were prepared, only take-out and kid things like hot dogs and nuggets were eaten) and Mr. Picklebottom had helped Jo and Beth to pick up a portion of their room, which is to say that SOME of the clutter was picked up in PART of the room. To be honest, after I got home I was not doing a fabulous job of catching things back up to the NORMAL level of squalor, but I had plans. Big plans. Getting down and dirty floor-scrubbing plans. Then I got sick. And simultaneously, so did Mr. Picklebottom. The kind of sick where doing ANYTHING AT ALL short of lying there in misery is impossible. There were four kids, though, who WEREN'T sick. So you can imagine what happened to the house when there were no adults functioning at a level capable of keeping the chaos in check. Which brings us to today.

After ingesting enough antibiotics so that by last Thursday I was functioning normally, or as normal as it gets for me, I was sick enough of all the mess to sit down and write down the things that needed to be done today WITHOUT FAIL. First of all, though it won't help the overall state of the house, the laundry still must be done. So I got it started. I loaded the dishwasher and washed dishes so the sink would be empty and I could FINALLY, after WAY TOO LONG, clean the little fish tank in which Jo's pet fighting fish, Calypso, resides. [The fish tank hasn't been done as yet, but it will be as soon as I publish this.] I also decided to hunt down and kill the dust bunnies right where they live, in their nests under Amy's dresser, crib and changing table. HOWEVER, while dressing Amy after her bath, Beth came in with her magnetic earrings, which basically attach to the earlobe with really strong, yet tiny, magnets. She pulled a necklace over her head and the earrings were pulled off her earlobes and proceeded to bounce across the hardwood floor. After gathering up what we could see, we were short one magnet, specifically one of the earring backs.

Now I couldn't vacuum those dust bunnies, because Beth was CERTAIN that the magnet had gone under the dresser, and heaven forbid I vacuum it up. So I had to first find the magnet. Since it was a really strong magnet, I thought I would just pass something long and metal back and forth over the floor under the dresser, the magnet would stick to it and I could go about my cleaning plans. So I went to the garage and came up with this:



After getting on my hands and knees, sticking it under the dresser and dragging it around for a while, I came up with nothing but dust. Lots of dust. So then I dragged the dresser away from the wall and ran the wrench around the baseboards, since there was a tiny gap between the bottom of the baseboard and the floor into which the magnet could have slipped. No dice. So then I followed the same steps underneath the changing table and the crib. Finally, I was left with sore knees and a very dusty wrench, but no magnet. In frustration, I let out a big sigh, looked down, and there was that damn magnet. Right in the middle of the floor where Beth and I had looked and run our hands over and finally determined that it must be under something. So YAY, I found the magnet, but my 5 minute dust vacuuming job turned into a much longer job that required a lot more effort. I will say, though, that Amy's dust bunnies have been vanquished. of course, after lugging the vacuum back downstairs, I noticed a couple of cobwebs. Next time...

You'll recall that I had started laundry. Well, I went downstairs to do the whole process of removing clothes from dryer, transferring clothes from washer to dryer and starting another load in the washer. I managed to get everything out of the dryer except one of my bras. A bra that I have only owned for a couple weeks now, as a couple weeks ago I was down to ONE raggedy bra and finally went to the store and purchased several so I could, you know, ROTATE their usage. It wouldn't come out of the dryer. WHY would it not come out of the dryer, you ask. Well, because of THIS:



One of the hooks had somehow hooked itself to the dryer drum. For the life of me, I could NOT unhook it. Now you would think that, hey, it got hooked on there somehow, so if I just REVERSE how it got hooked, it will come UNhooked. Yeah. That's what you would think. Thinking is overrated. And WRONG. No matter what I tried, and I tried every possible angle, it would not unhook. When I did finally get it out, which took A WHILE, it looked like this:



So there goes one new bra into the trash. At least I buy cheap-ass cotton bras from Target. Tell me these kinds of wonderful things happen to you. They happen ALL THE TIME to me.

So now, after cleaning Calypso's tank (only because I can't justify NOT doing it, the poor guy has been suffering long enough), I am going to sit down with a warm brownie and some ice cream rather than finish what I wanted to finish, since OBVIOUSLY everything I try today is subject to sabotage by the fates. I just hope Calypso and his tank survive the cleaning, it has been THAT kind of day. And that is why my house is a disaster area. Because I myself am apparently a walking disaster.