Digging out

The conditions outside are merely wet – a nice rainstorm is dumping much-needed water all over the valley, swelling up creeks and causing the usual spat of panic as long-neglected gutters overflow and the water-control systems invariably clog up with all the debris we were “too busy” to deal with before the rains hit.

But that’s not my big clean-up issue of the day.

Mine is inside.

See, yesterday was a holiday. This means we had a three day weekend. It was also one of those stormy kinds of weekends, which means that our backyard is a solid mud-pit, which means that the Denizens pretty much stayed indoors for the whole 72 hours.

Hilarity ensues.

Yesterday was particularly fun. They had the day off. We did not. The children are rather well-trained by now when it comes to leaving Daddy alone while he’s working…but Mommy?

Mommy exists to tend their every whim, doancha know. That’s why about every eighteen seconds, somebody was erupting into my office with their hair on fire because somebody else had sinned, yea verily and required punishment.

Or had hurt themselves and required cuddling.

Or was hungry and needed food.

Or had something hilarious they needed to share.

Boo Bug bonked her head and was crying. Boo Bug dropped her milk and was crying. Boo Bug was thinking about how she bonked her head earlier and was crying. Boo Bug didn’t know why, but she was crying.

Boo Bug is our weeper. She cries frequently, and often for no danged reason at all. Which leads to people starting to, you know, ignore the fact that she’s weeping…even if she’s being quite loud about it…which means that sometimes she really does do a number on herself and is hard-pressed to get anybody to give a darn about it.

And she doesn’t see what a sheep-boy and wolves has to do with it. WAH!

Danger Mouse was feeling talk-y. She had a lot to tell me. Stories, little gleaming bits of information about this one time? When her friend? From schooo-oool? He did this thing? And it was, no, seriously!, it was hilarious? So her other friend? Who had this toy? Did this other thing?

At one point I rather testily informed her that I was kind of working, here. Could she save the story for, you know, later?

Oh sure, she said cheerfully.

And then she sat down right on the other side of the door and rehearsed the telling of the tale.

Eldest had a paper to write. Which is why I started hearing her Nintendo beeping, buzzing and twanging. So I got up, walked down the hallway, busted her, took away the Nintendo, pointed at the laptop and snarled, “Report! NOW!”

A little later I heard giggling, stalked down the hallway again, and there she was, with both her sisters peering over her shoulders, creating animated stick figures with her CAD program.

“REPORT! REPORT! And if I catch you doing this again…!”

Meanwhile, guess how much work I was getting done? Yeah, that’s right – none.

Captain Adventure gave me one hour of blissful silence while he watched a Dora DVD. And then, he decided that he wanted to hang out with Mommy. Because he is all about Mommy right now. Daddy? Pfffft. Daddy is largely useless. Mommy is The Person.

Obviously, this is mostly something I cherish. But there are times when I find myself wishing that Daddy were a little more…well, interesting. By the end of the day, his fiendish frolics were becoming most inventive. The last email I sent out was a bizarre pair of sentences that I suspect made absolutely no sense whatsoever…but since he was at that very moment whacking me on the back of the head with the flyswatter while riding an office chair wildly around my bedroom, I suppose I’ll just have to forgive myself any…oddities…around my email compositions.

And then, there is the problem of me being the sole keeper of the arcane knowledge around where stuff goes. This annoys me no end. Why it is my job to know where pictures should be stored or extra pencils kept or cookie cutters placed or books of random music displayed, I really can’t say.

Which is a lie. I know why it is that way. It’s because, like cleaning bathrooms or doing the ironing, there is only one person in this house who will do it. And that’s me.

We’ve lived in this house over ten years, and I don’t think my husband has cleaned any of the three bathrooms more than once. Nor has he filed a single slip of paper, paid a bill or put away a picture.

My desk looks like a stationary store threw up on it. It’s covered in shards of art work, pictures, invoices, Den Dollars, real dollars, labels, a cookie cutter, a flash drive, a first aid kit, several small balls of yarn, a whack of earrings Eldest made, a scattering of DPNs and a notebook full of smiley faces and crooked houses, penned in ink.

Plus a few other things that I can’t clearly make out without disturbing the piles – messing with the piles is a hazardous activity best undertaken only by fully-caffeinated and attentive people.

Which I am not at the present time.

I am merely grateful for the silence that will become burdensome later. For the peace I’ll look forward to ending, for the lack of constant interruptions that I’ll so gladly bring back when it’s time to pick them up from school.

Ah, parenthood! What a messed up world of contradictions it can be…