I can’t take it.


It’s the middle of February and when I woke up it was ten degrees below zero. Which means we have been experiencing the “joy” of winter for, what? Seventeen straight months?

Well, feels like it, anyways.

PLUS we have reached the point of maximum capacity in our house. Every drawer, every closet is full to the point of bursting. And I don’t even dare venture into the furnace room…there are dust bunnies down there the size of vespas. Roving packs of highly intelligent, vespa-sized dust bunnies. I can’t think of a thing I need in that room that would be worth fighting them off for.

So I stomp around the house, railing about the mess and the dirt and the general shabbiness of it all. Funny, I can remember my mother doing the same thing and right about this time of year, too. I’d wake up to a crash and a “I HATE this blankity-blank house!” Mom, I know just what you mean.

Of course it isn’t really the house that is the problem…The real problem is Hubby. Haha, kidding. (Maybe. We’ll see how big my Valentine’s Day box of chocolate is first.) The problem is that we can never quite summon the energy in the winter to figure out where all this random stuff belongs. Where does this battery charger go? The progress reports from school? The burned out light bulbs? The one extra WORKING light bulb?

Answer: I don’t KNOW. Just put it AWAY for the love of God.

Hence the mess. I’m looking, right now, at a wicker basket that contains five chargers, a broken video camera, a car charger for a cell phone that no longer works, the cell phone in question and our old answering machine.

WTH? Seriously, where do I even start? Why do all chargers have to be different? So we have to constantly buy new chargers, no doubt…. Blankity-blank electronics companies. Don’t even pretend we couldn’t have a standard charger for at least all kinds of phones. Every single thing fits into a plug in the wall, don’t tell me it can’t be uniform on the other end of the wire, too.

And what am I supposed to do with all this broken down electronic debris? Box them up and drive across town to the hazardous waste disposal site? In ten degrees below zero? Don’t be ridiculous.

The only answer, the ONLY acceptable answer, is for spring to arrive. For there to be warmth and sun and the chirping of birds and the lilting scent of lilacs. I don’t care what the heck my house looks like in the spring. I open a window and suddenly, my home is a palace. In spring I can step over the mess, pour myself a gin and tonic, sit on the front steps and just relax…. Which pretty much outs me as a terrible housekeeper no matter what the season, but I don’t care. Spring is gentle and generous and gives you a big, fat, lemon-meringue kiss on the mouth every morning. When the air smells like young grass and wet soil I don’t care what my closets look like. Come May, the dust bunnies can HAVE the house. Until then, I have got to do something with all this junk…

I think I’ll just toss it all in the furnace room and then run like hell. Gin and tonic, anyone?



The Rise & Fall of a Momocracy

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