If Your Husband Buys You Bird Seed…

This post will not come with a photo, because what I’m looking at is not pretty.

It all started with a large bag of bird feed my husband bought for me the other day.  Wasn’t that sweet?  He set it by my front door. 

When I came home from taking the boys to the bus stop, I saw it sitting there and decided to put it in the front closet, where I keep the bird seed.

When I opened the closet door, I discovered a mountain of coats on the floor, which certain unnamed boys have apparently been building for quite some time.

So I began to hang them up. 

Only some of the coats were dirty, and some were getting too small, and some had been rejected because of style (yes, we have arrived at that point).

I may as well sort them.

Hats and Mittens surfaced in the pile.

Might as well sort them too.  And wash them.  There’s nothing worse than opening up the hat and scarf bin in the fall and being accosted by that stale snow smell.

What?  What are work gloves doing in here?  No wonder the boys couldn’t find them the last time they went out to get wood.  These go in the garage.  In a hanging pocket organizer.  Each pair in the pocket with the name of the boy who owns them.

So I take them to the garage.  No way.  Yuck!  On the dusty yucky floor where I’m sure spiders are waiting to jump out and scare me, there are a trillion boy-size work gloves.  Some are half under the freezer. 

The pockets directly above them are empty, of course.  I pick up a handful, mindful to look for creepy crawlies, and start to sort them on the freezer.

The freezer. 

I should get meat out for dinner before I cover the top with the gloves I am sorting. 

I toss the gloves on the rug in front of the freezer.

I open the freezer. Ugh.  I really need to sort this stuff out and find out if there is any more ground beef in the bottom (we bought a side of beef last fall).  My husband said he couldn’t find any.  And yes, he said he searched.  But we’ve been married, hmmm, 13 years, and, well, I’ve learned that there is a difference in how we search. 

Oh, wow, this stuff is freezing my fingers!  I need my gloves.

Back into the house I go, to our winter glove drawers by the door.  My drawer is missing my gloves.  Now where would my gloves be? 

I purchased this neat wooden stack of drawers several years ago, and labeled each one with the name of a boy (though, about now, I am wondering why in tarnation I would do such a thing). 

I check the other three drawers (owned by the same unnamed boys who made the coat mountain).

Ugh!  You’ve got to be kidding!  Candy.  Wrappers. Toys.  Water guns.  Ah-hah!  My gloves!  Make that my glove, singular!  Grrrr.

I go back out to the freezer to sort one handed. 

A pile of pork here.  A stack of frozen pizza there.  A stack of veggies over there.  Roasts in that pile.  Eeeyoooh, what is that stuff?  Trash in an another pile. 

Ahh. Yes.  Nine more packs of hamburger. 

And…One.  Two.  Three.  Ugh, seriously?  Four??? almost empty containers of ice cream?  And that’s not counting the big tub of vanilla they begged me for during my last trip to Kroger.

I think we’ll have this “tenderized, round steak” (whatever that is), and ice cream for dinner.

I put the stuff back in the freezer, with the hamburger on the top.  For obvious reasons.  And lay the tenderized thing on top of the washer.

Now where was I?  Oh yes, that nasty pile of work gloves.

Oh, but wait.  I’d better rotate the laundry through the machines. 

Stink.  My baskets are full.

I take the clean clothes down to the bedroom. 

May as well quick put these away. 

I find a few more coats in the bedroom closet I bought on sale at the end of last season.  I wonder if any of them will fit the boys yet…  It would be great to weed out a few more of the pretty-much-outgrown ones.

I haul them out and down the hall and make another pile in the front entry way.

Oh, no.  Sigh.

My four year old has been playing in the piles.  And trying them on.  And carting them all over the house. 

He’s also found a stash of ball caps from the back of the closet.  I know.  Because he has THREE of them on his head.

Maybe I should put a couple nails around the top of the closet to get our collection of hats up out of reach out of the way.

I go to my kitchen “tool” drawer. 

My three containers of sorted-by-size nails are dumped in the bottom beneath gobs of string, long twist ties, and bit-less screwdrivers, etc. 

Sigh.

I sit on the floor and begin pulling stuff out.  I stuff the string in a bag.  The twist ties in another.  My four year old comes over to root and wants to help.  We sort the nails, find the bits, and begin to put the drawer back together.

The phone rings.  I struggle to stand up on my now sleeping feet in order to go find the phone. 

It’s a friend.  I needed a break.   I need to sit—my feet are all pins and needles.  I go sit at my desk and check my email while we chat.  It feels good to sit.

Oh, Avon is having a sale.  With Free shipping.  Wooh-hoo! We really need some Skin-So-Soft Bug repellent with sunscreen for soccer.

I get off the phone and search Avon’s sight.  Drat!  Out of Stock.  Figures.  There is a crash in the kitchen.

I head back out and find the contents of the tool drawer back out on the floor, the nails in one big pile, a puddle of milk, and a very sorry looking little boy.  Sigh.

I go to get a paper towel.  The role is empty. 

I head out to the garage where I keep the extra.  I really need to go potty.  Now. 

I stop at the bathroom, go to finish the paper work, and find the role is empty.  Nasty things go through my mind. 

I search for the extra roll of TP on the shelf by the toilet.  Oh no.  You’ve got to be kidding.    The spare roll took a recent bath in either the sink or the toilet.  I don’t want to know which.  More nasty things go through my mind.    Thank heavens there are a few tissues left in the box.

The phone rings.  Again.  Figures.

I rush out of the bathroom, search the living room and remember I left the phone in the kitchen.  Darn. 

I navigate my way through piles of jackets, coats, hats, nails, tools, FISHIES??, birdfeed and milk.

It’s my husband.  “Hi, honey”, he says.  “Whatcha doing?” 

One glance at the house and I take the fifth.

“Could you do me a favor?”

“Maybe,” I say.

“Could you check and see if I left my wallet on the dresser?”

I checked.  It was.  That was a good thing. 

Or bad, if he needs to buy gas to get home.  Bad, because that would require an extra trip to Indy for me. 

Very bad, because…

Because it’s 2:00 in the afternoon.  I have piles of stuff in the entry, the living room, the bedroom and, well, everywhere. I’m not sure what I’m doing with that tenderized thing on the washer.   We have soccer practice after school, AND Middle school orientation this evening. And, I’m still sitting in my p.j.’s, feeling totally immobilized by the scope of the mess, and blogging instead of searching for the order in my world.

LOL!!!!!

So, I’m skipping the “tenderized” meat thing.  Leaving the piles, and getting a shower. 

We’ll just have ice cream for dinner. 

And if I hear one complaint about the state of the house, may God have mercy on their soul.

I guess the morale of this story is, if your husband buys you birdseed, maybe you ought to ask HIM to put it in the closet.