Cleaning Up
Posted: March 10, 2011 Filed under: Aha!, Housekeeping, Writers Write | Tags: Trusting Your Instincts, writers, writing Leave a comment »Last night, Coco cleaned up. Without being asked she scraped, rinsed, loaded, added soap, and ran the dishwasher. This morning, I discovered the plastic containers, the things I religiously cram into the upper rack, on the bottom. They didn’t melt. Who knew?
The Thief Within
Posted: August 13, 2010 Filed under: Housekeeping, Writers Write | Tags: family, writers, writing Leave a comment »When I was a child, my family took a road trip to Canada. Along the way, my dad had the car serviced.
The mechanic pointed to an apparatus under the hood. “What’s that?”
My dad said, “The air conditioner.”
“Hey Ralph! Come get a load of this. This guy’s got an air conditioner. Bet you feel like a fool for spending money on that?”
The air conditioner in my minivan went out this week. In San Antonio or Sauna Antonio, if you aren’t indigent and living under a highway overpass, your car has an air conditioner. Panicked that destitution would surely follow, Bacon led a convoy to a garage owned by a friend of a friend. Too late for business hours, we left my Mommy-mobile in front of the overhead door under a security camera.
Panic never pays. While we were gone, Lilly, the bird killing schnauzer, helped herself to an unsecured cheese pizza. Let me rephrase that. The dog ate her weight in cheese pizza. We came home to an empty box neatly propped against the leg of the kitchen table and a dog wider than she is tall.
Sheet Cake
Posted: July 8, 2010 Filed under: Aha!, Housekeeping, Mouths of Babes, Writers Write | Tags: perception, Trusting Your Instincts, writers, writing Leave a comment »Two nights ago, I couldn’t get the kids to sleep. Since I’m the mom, I don’t crash until they do. Bacon can nod off anywhere, anytime, through any form of natural disaster. Fortunately, he’s married to me. I wake at the sound of butterfly wings, spiderweb spinning, and a ten-year old’s insomnia.
That precise thing led to the eradication of box springs from our bedroom. What? You don’t rearrange the furniture when a family member can’t sleep? In a fit, I woke Bacon and demanded he remove the middle layer from our cake of a bed. I’ve written about my consternation over the Cake Bed before. I’m not sure why I didn’t see the solution earlier. It was always a pain to don climbing tackle just to get aboard each night. As an added bonus, the layerectomy completely feng shuied our bedroom. Now, the bed looks like it did twenty years ago in the furniture showroom. No matter how many different dressings I’ve applied, it never seemed right. Maybe, it was meant to be a platform and not a drum.
The next day, I searched the house looking for the girls. Their rooms were empty. The computer was off. The television was dark. I walked into my bedroom. Cherry reclined atop the fleece blanket reading a book. Beside her, Coco caught an afternoon nap.
Why are you in here?
It’s the most comfortable spot in the house.
Why now?
It’s the right size.
