I Hate Pinks

I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but I've become the de facto laundry-doer in our household. That's not to say that Diane doesn't contribute in this department; it's just that she deals with clothing at her "day job" and on a "subconscious level" avoids dealing with clothing at home, if at all possible. So the chore of laundering our garments falls into my hands, which is fine. Laundry is simply one of those necessary evils in life: the job that's NEVER done.

I have my laundry routine down to a science. Perhaps that's another reason why I've become Laundry-King of our household. I sort our clothes into six piles, yes, six. First I have the traditional dark and light piles. Then I have separate dark and light sock and underwear piles which I wash in hot water. It's underwear, people. Lord only knows what's growing in there, and I want them DEAD (the things growing in the underwear, not the underwear themselves...they're already dead). I also have a black pile since black is the only color Diane will wear. No, she's not a Goth and she doesn't have a fixation with death; she just likes black. And trying to get Diane to wear color is like asking Sunni's and Shiite's to get along: it's just not going to happen no matter how hard you try.

Because I have two young daughters, the last pile I sort is pinks. Sure there is an occasional purple or even an orange that sneaks into this pile, but for the most part, this is a big, heaping pile of pink. I hate doing pinks. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. Not because they're pink, but because of what's CAKED ON the pinks. As precious as my girls are to me, they are...how do I put this gently...messy.

The pinks are the most laborious of my laundry loads. I have to inspect each article of clothing, searching for food stains (usually chocolate or ketchup), grass stains, dirt stains, or "what the hell is that?" stains. Then I pull out my faithful bottle of Shout and go to work. But it's not enough to merely SPRAY the stain; you have to work the Shout into the stain, vigorously rubbing the fabric together so that the cleaning agents can penetrate to the very heart of the stain. I do this with EVERY ARTICLE OF CLOTHING belonging to my beloved daughters and it takes frickin' FOREVER. And no matter how meticulous I am in inspecting their clothes for stains, I always seem to miss one smudge of chocolate or a dollop of spaghetti sauce hiding in an inconspicuous location. Always. It's maddening. I mean, how in the world do you get food stains in your armpit?

I can't wait for the day both girls to outgrow their affection for pink. Not that the color pink is necessarily the problem. I just now associate that color with food stains and the smell of Shout. I'm like Pavlov's dog: every time I see the color pink, I get the urge to clean. One possible solution is to reintroduce the girls to a handy little gadget called a bib. Yeah, like that'd go over well. The REAL solution is for me to shut up and and grab the Shout.

Has It Really Been That Long?

My best friend from high school called last week to inform me that our twenty year reunion had been scheduled for the end of September. Twenty years. Ho-ly cow. I know I'm not the first person in the history of humanity to ask the question, "Where did the time go?" but it feels unique to me. I can't be twenty years older. My body may feel the effects of nearly 40 years on earth, but in my mind I'm still a spry 25.

I haven't attended any of my previous reunions for various reasons. Either the timing was bad, I had a conflict in scheduling, or was simply disinterested. But there's something different about the twenty year reunion, and I've experienced a change in attitude. I recently reconnected with my best friend from high school after over ten years, and we've kept in good contact since then. Now I'm genuinely interested in returning home and catching up with several of my classmates. Perhaps that's the difference between being 25 and nearly 40. The 25 year-old is in process of establishing himself in life and is inwardly focused, while the 40 year-old has gained a little more perspective and is more able to see the big picture, focusing on things that are truly important like friends and family. At least I hope this is the case.

I don't think I'm going to be able to attend my 20 year reunion, and for the first time in my high school reunion history, I'm bummed. We already have vacation planned the week before, and I'm not sure that I can swing the tight turnaround. I'm looking into the options, but it's not looking good. It sounds like things fell through the cracks in the organization of the 20 year reunion, but should be more in line for the 25 year, so perhaps we'll shoot for that.

I Hope This Lasts

Well, we finally did it.

Actually, Diane finally did it. I'm gleefully tagging along for the ride. She finally got sick enough of constantly cleaning the house only to have it completely destroyed mere minutes later that she put together an allowance list. That's right, we've stooped to the realm of bribery and cheap child labor, appealing to the greed of our children in order to keep a clean home. Or, for those who prefer a positive spin on the situation, we're teaching our girls the values of hard work and personal responsibility, as well as the lost art of earning and saving money. Yeah, yeah, yeah...those things will hopefully sink in to their rapidly developing brains, but right now we're more concerned about not breaking our necks after stepping on a strategically placed Happy Meal toy.

Kailey and Kyra each have their own lists for the week. And each list is not limited to the usual daily/weekly chores. They also contain duties concerning personal hygeine, personal development, and the attitudes in which the duties are completed. We're going to experiment and see how far we can stretch this sucker. For instance, will the promise of monetary compensation be enough of a motivator for the girls to "be nice to one another"? Probably not. But we're going to try it anyway, though we haven't worked out the finer details of how much we'll dock the girls for being turds to each other. Now that I mention it, we haven't really decided how much we'll reward them either. No matter. That'll come.

So far our dastardly plan is coming along swimmingly. The house has been clutter-free, the girls' rooms no longer resemble obstacle courses, and the fresh scent of Pine-Sol permeates the air. One of Kailey's weekly assignments has been to mop the tile floor in the kitchen. She's so desperate for cash (not really...she's loaded) that she opted to mop DAILY. I started to tell her that she only had to do it once per week before Diane shushed me. "Don't discourage her," she chided. "If she wants to mop every day, let her." Okie-dokie!

The real question will be how long we can keep up this ruse. How long will the weekly promise of cold, hard, petty cash motivate them to become domestic goddesses? That remains to be seen, but so far, so good.

Just Another Entry in the Journal of Bad Parenting

Kyra woke me up yesterday morning, which is not unusual since she wakes me up EVERY morning, usually by rushing into our bathroom and slamming and locking the bathroom door. Why she needs to lock the door is a mystery. I guess she likes her privacy. Yesterday was different though as she shook me awake bristling with excitement. "Daddy, I'm going to pull another tooth!"

I wasn't sure she had any teeth left in her head to pull. It seems like every other day one of the girls is walking around sporting a bloody Kleenex and a fresh gap in her teeth. It's a little maddening. I asked Kyra if she even had a loose tooth. "Yes! Look!" she said, thrusting her opened mouth within an inch of my face and wiggling her remaining top front tooth. And with a maniacal cackle, she fled the room. I turned over, flipped my pillow to the cool side, and made a vain attempt to return to sleep. Two minutes later Kyra returned, head down, lower lip puffed out, tail between legs. Kyra is susceptible to severe mood swings. It makes me kind of concerned for her future. "It won't come out," she pouted. I consoled her and gave her the old "keep wiggling it" pep talk then sent her on her way.

We didn't hear anything more about the loose tooth until lunchtime when, out of the blue, Kyra punctured the silence: "WHERE IS IT!!" She darted around the room screaming, looking under couch pillows, and scanning the floor.

"Where is what?" we asked, thoroughly confused.

"MY TOOTH!!" she bellowed as she pointed to the newly acquired hole in her head. "I WENT TO WIGGLE IT, AND IT WASN'T THERE!!" Surely enough, the loose tooth gave up without a struggle, and not an ounce of blood was shed. I also noticed a pronounced lisp as she explained her situation. Without missing a beat, the rest of us began combing the family room for the missing tooth. Diane and Kailey pulled the bottom cushion off of the love seat and investigated the long lost kernels of popcorn and other miscellaneous pieces of crap that congregate under the cushion to see if the missing tooth was hiding among them. Kyra did the same with the couch. I scoured the floor for a moment before making my way over to the kitchen sink to inspect Kyra's lunch plate. Sure enough, mixed in with the remaining crumbs of Kyra's lunch and garnished with just a touch of tomato sauce (or was that ketchup?), sat Kyra's tooth.

I've never cheered for a more disgusting sight in all my life.

Fast-forward to this morning. Kyra woke both of us up, head down, lower lip puffed out, tail between legs. "The tooth fairy didn't come last night."

CRRRRRRRRAP!

"Well did you write her a note?" Diane asked groggily. I've got to hand it to my wife, she's quick on her feet and able to pull BS out of her nether regions even while half asleep. I fell in love with her all over again, morning breath and all.

"Noooo," Kyra whined.

"Well, we'll have to work on that today. She'll come. Don't worry."

Kyra seemed somewhat satisfied with Diane's response, so she continued with her morning routine by slamming and locking our bathroom door for her morning pee pee.

OK, we suck. I get that. But in our defense, we had a very busy night last night entertaining Diane's family and throwing a birthday party for our sister-in-law. We baked five pizzas...from scratch! And did I mention that we decorated for a birthday party? We were busy, busy, busy. Cooking, cleaning, decorating, eating, cleaning, partying. After the family left, we bathed the girls and didn't get them to bed until 9:30. We were tired.

And we were a little traumatized, too. At around 10:00, Diane decided to put together a batch of margaritas, but discovered shortly after mixing the necessary ingredients that we had no ice. NO ICE!! We used it all at the birthday party! All of our ice was gone! Gone, I tell you! So Diane and I stood at the opened freezer door and stared at the ice maker willing it to produce some ice. It didn't work. So we nursed ice-less margaritas until Diane heard the water turn on about a half-hour later. I rushed to the freezer, collected the ten or so precious cubes of frozen H20, and deposited them into our warm drinks.

We finished our drinks and went to bed, and never gave Kyra's tooth fairy pillow a second thought. We were tired and traumatized, and maybe a little toasted, so I guess when it comes right down to it, yes, we're bad parents. We'll pay though. Literally. I'm sure that when the tooth fairy comes tonight, she'll be leaving Kyra a fresh, crisp Ben Franklin to make up for all her troubles. I think I need another margarita, warm or otherwise.

Camping In

The girls have recently discovered the joys of "camping out"...inside the house. They've always enjoyed building tents out of blankets and pillows, then their aunt Debbie bought them real pup tents a couple of years ago which led to a period of indoor camping. It's amazing how much space a couple of pup tents occupy when set up in the family room.

Well aunt Debbie struck again a few weeks back when the girls made the trip up to the Northwest with Grammy and Papa to visit her in her new condo. Since space and sleeping arrangements was an issue, she bought the girls these Disney Princess air mattress/sleeping bag combos. They're actually pretty cool. You inflate the air mattress then slip the sleeping bag over the top. The sleeping bag stays in place and you don't have to worry about sliding off of the air mattress. I've got to hand it to aunt Debbie: she is the giver of cool gifts.

The girls brought the mattresses home after their trip, and they weren't much of an issue until this week when Diane's brother and his family came to town. He has two boys roughly the girls' age and at some point someone came up the idea of doing sleepovers. One of the girls would spend the night at Grammy and Papa's house and one of the boys would come home with us, then the next night we'd switch. Great plan.

Out came the air mattress/sleeping bag combos, and they worked great. My youngest nephew, who's four, made a little macho fuss over sleeping in a "girls bed", but that didn't last long. Both sleepover nights were huge successes. But now we can't get the girls to sleep in their own beds! They've taken turns sleeping in each others' rooms and have been putting up a fuss about sleeping in their perfectly good beds. So we've decided to put the kibosh on this recent trend before it gets out of hand.

And believe me, I know from personal experience how out of hand it can get. When I was about 11, my brother and I saw the movie Alien. It was a Sunday night and we were at my Dad's place. He let us stay a little later before dropping us off at home so we could watch the Sunday night premiere of Alien on HBO. So we "watched" the movie (mostly through our fingertips), it scared the mother-junkies out of us, and my Dad took us home in time for us to get into bed because Monday, as it turned out, was a school day. I slept not a frickin' wink. My brother slept not a frickin' wink either. We spent the better part of three months taking turns sleeping in a sleeping bag, sans air mattress, on the hard floor of each others' room, well aware of the fact that monsters materialize UNDERNEATH the bed, making the unfortunate floor-dweller of that particular evening easy fodder. But I guess we figured that getting eaten together was better than getting eaten alone. And unlike the poor fools in Alien, we weren't in space where no one can hear you scream, so we persisted in our nightly ritual. And I wonder where the girls get some of their nervous, paranoid tendencies. Mystery solved.

So we packed the air mattresses away. It's only a matter of time until I do something stupid like let them watch a movie that they're too young to see and that scares the mother-junkies out of them. Then history will repeat itself. At least they'll have comfy air mattresses to sleep on.