The mice are bored to death.
My Amazing Amy has been gone since noon Wednesday, having taken all 5 girls with her on a craft- focused road trip, and I am bored to death. It is quiet and I am utterly lost. Don’t get it twisted, I love how things remain where I left them and things are in the place they belong (like the remote for the living room tv that was once discovered upstairs in the kids bathroom of all places), how I have not had to yell at anyone or mediate a fight over the Disney Channel or Minecraft, how the sink isn’t overflowing with dishes not washed off or dishes coming out of the dishwasher still covered in food because they went in with dried on food and Faith, my 13 year old doesn’t bother to look at the dishes she puts away to see if there are “food remnants ” or the counters and the random sticky spots that have no reason to be sticky at all; but I am bored nonetheless.
I do have the 4 dogs, 4 cats, 3 guinea pigs and a teenaged boy still here that all seem to be acting like the rules don’t apply while “mom” isn’t there to regulate, so there is that to look forward to. I am also confronted with a house that is too big for one person to keep clean. With the 8 animals that are able to roam free there come random mystery stains that really are not much of a mystery. No need to warm up the Mystery Machine and round up Scooby snacks, we know what they represent.
I know delegation is the key, but with no one to delegate to, I found myself feeling that the cleanliness of the house was not really all that important. If you know me at all you know I am all about order. I couldn’t go to bed one night a few years ago because I noticed one of the remote controls was not in the wire basket on the coffee table where it belongs and I just couldn’t stop thinking about it as I lay in bed. It took me about 30 minutes to find it and I remain to this day convinced it was moved by Ashton Kutcher and I was being Punk’d. Amy is forever telling me to “let it go”, so I think she would be proud of me, but also a little sad it took her leaving the state and abandoning her husband for me to achieve this. Overly dramatic? I think not.
The last thing is the responsibilities I was ill prepared for. At 2:24am Friday night one of the dogs woke me so he could go outside. Amy would usually takes care of this and I continue to sleep uninterrupted. He didn’t pee or poop, he just seemed to want to see the patio, shake his head really fast back and forth, stretch his back and yawn and then come back inside. It is now 4:51am and while Elton Dog went straight back to sleep, I am watching clips from The Daily Show on my Facebook feed and listening to him snore and chase an imaginary bunny in his dream. Ugh!
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.