Laundry, laundry, everywhere!

One thing Nikki and I did not count on when we joined forces was the sheer amount of laundry that we would be doing every week.  Heck, forget every week... every DAY!  We have dirty laundry piles in practically every room: all three bathrooms, each kids' bedrooms, the laundry room (of course), and then we have the habitual "unauthorized piles" of laundry that accumulate in the rest of the rooms.

These unauthorized piles mostly consist of socks.  I don't know what it is about kids and socks, but somehow, when they sit in a comfortable chair or couch, the socks spontaneously leap from their feet and land on the floor.  The kids are obviously unaware of this unnatural occurrence, because they don't seem to be troubled by it.  However, when I point it out to them, they look at their socks in utter bewilderment, as if this will inspire me to pick them up myself since it is obviously not their fault.

We have a laundry chute, and each week we tell them to go to their rooms and throw their dirty clothes down the chute.  The pile that results from this is unimaginable.  It is about five feet in diameter and rises halfway up to the ceiling.  It makes us lightheaded just looking at it!  Each week, if we wait until the weekend to do any laundry, it takes a good day and a half to get it all done.  If we could afford a maid, this person would do laundry every single day and never run out of stuff to do.

We have two dryers, because if we had to wait for one dryer for each load, we'd never get done.  We use the outside clothes-line AND the inside clothes-line whenever possible, too!

We've learned to hard way (more than a few times) to check the pockets before putting any pants in the laundry.  Usually their pockets are full of candy wrappers, toys, money, notes from teachers... you know, unimportant stuff!  But occasionally we will find their phones or mp3 players or other electronic devices... we've ruined a few of those.  The worst is when a pen slips by your notice.  We've cleaned up some nasty messes, but we NEVER want to scrub pen ink from the inside of the dryer again!

Now let's talk about towels.  We have lots of towels, but we never seem to have enough, so we are doing loads of towels throughout the week.  One Sunday morning I woke up first and realized that we only had one clean towel left.  Everyone needed a shower for Church, and there was no time to do a load of towels.  So, I did what any overwhelmed, I-am-so-sick-of-all-this-laundry parent would do: I drove to Wal-Mart and bought six new towels!  We still don't have enough.

Then there's the issue of stains and general nastiness that mostly happened when they were younger, but I will spare the reader from those details!

We have told them many times that our goal is to get them to the point where they are doing their own laundry, because as John Cheese so astutely wrote: "There's nothing sadder than sitting in a laundromat and watching a [grown man] stare at a washing machine like it was a nuclear reactor."  Nikki and I have sworn to the heavens that our children will NOT become one of those people!  If they bring their clothes home during college break, they are free to use the washer and dryer, but we are NOT doing it for them!  There aren't enough quarters in the world to pay us back for eighteen years of this madness!

Temporary Insanity

We all thought our parents were nuts, right?  Well, they were... at least temporarily.  And it was you, dear reader, that drove them to this condition.  And, I say this knowing full well that my siblings and I were responsible for our own parents' frequent trips to the looney-bin.

Actually, we all have moments in our life that drive us to the very edge of our patience and tolerance, and sooner or later, we all snap.  This is a condition that is brought about in our daily struggle to get along with other people. It all starts when we are kids.  You've asked your brother time and time again not to go in your room and play with your toys.  After the tenth time of telling him, then discovering that he did it again... with your favorite toy... snap... an ugly monster emerges in the form of a kindergartener with fangs and claws! The next thing you know, your parents are forcibly peeling you off of your brother and wondering if five years old is too soon for anti-anxiety medication.  To your parents, it seems like you've lost your mind.  To you, it was the only reasonable alternative.  Like I said... temporary insanity!

Life moves on and we get our own apartment with a roommate.  You've asked him a hundred times not to put his smelly, dirty socks on top of the coffee table.  The next thing you know, you find yourself trying to force his socks down his own throat while your girlfriend watches in horror at you losing your mind over socks! (Geez, what a nut-case!)  Years later, that same girl threatens to beat her husband with the toilet lid if he leaves it up one more time!

It also happens in the office, when the sweet young lady that volunteered to look after the break room puts up a nice sticky note, complete with flowers and hand-drawn smiley faces, reminding people that if they take the last cup of coffee, to please make a new pot.  Then it happens again and she sends out a sweet reminder by email.  Then another email, not so sweet.  This escalates until finally this sweet, mild-mannered, otherwise reasonable young woman is going from cubicle to cubicle with an empty coffee pot in one hand and a staple gun in the other demanding to know who left the empty coffee pot!

Now tell me, who in their right mind, when confronted with this vision of craziness is going to admit to leaving the empty coffee pot?  That's right... NO ONE!

Now, in the world of parenting, situations like this crop up on almost a daily basis.  When a parent says to a child, "how many times have I asked you not to ________ ?"  Fill in your own blank there.  What the parent is really saying is, "you are slowly driving me insane, and if you do _________ again, I might have to kill you!"  But what the child hears is "blah blah blah blah" and what they see is a crazy person moving their jaws up and down.  So, given these conditions, it should come as no surprise to anyone that when the parent finally hunts his kids down one-by-one with a block of dried-up cheese in one hand and the torn up wrapper in the other, that the parent has officially lost his mind! 

Yes, dear reader, the nut job with the cheese was me.  This moment of temporary insanity was brought to my attention by our fourteen-year-old, Nate.  Someone had clumsily opened a new block of cheese and left it unwrapped in the fridge, making a good portion of the cheese hard and uneatable.  This was about the ten-millionth time that this had happened, and I very nearly took a temporary trip to crazy world.  Fortunately for everyone else in the house, they had all gone to bed by the time I discovered it, so I had a night's rest to return to the land of the sane.

The next morning, I calmly asked Nate if he had opened the cheese, and he just started laughing.  I asked him what was so funny, and he proceeded to re-enact my reaction from the last time this had happened.  Stomping around the house in a fury asking each one of them who did it. 

I ask you again, which child in their right mind will admit to leaving the cheese open when confronted with this vision of craziness?  That's right.... NONE of them!

I must say, I was impressed with his acting skills, and his voice-over work was splendidly done as well.  But the real kicker was discovering that this one-man Broadway show of his had already been performed for his friends and classmates.  That's what he was laughing about.

That's when I began to ponder the craziness of my parents.  I remembered the times they lost their minds.  I remember telling my friends how crazy my parents were.  And, I remembered pointing this out to them, using my not-so-subtle skills of dramatic prose.  I vaguely recalled my mother saying something to the effect of, "one day your kids will make you crazy, and will act exactly the same way!"

Holy crap... Bill Cosby was right!  The "mother's curse" DOES work!

So, therefore Nathanial, I hereby curse you!  Here it comes....

One day your kids will make you crazy and you will act just like us!

Damn, that felt good.  I'm hungry now.  I wonder if there's any cheese...

Our New House, Part 1

Nikki and I were married on July 20, 2007, and a week later, we moved into our new house together.  It was a six-bedroom house built in 1948: perfect for a big family.  The house was well built, but it wasn't perfect. There were several major repairs that were necessary, which may account for the great deal we got on the price of the house.

But perfect or not, the kids loved it.  So much space to explore, and everyone got their own room.  I'll never forget our first night together.  It was kind of like a camping trip!

One of the things that was so cool about this house was that it had a laundry chute.  The kids thought this was so cool.  One day, I heard the strangest noise: a funny sliding sound, a plop, and then a lot of giggling.  Turns out, the kids were throwing their stuffed animals down the chute, and having a ball.  This went on for a while... slide, plop, giggle.... slide, plop, giggle....

...clunkity, clukity,....BAM!!!!!!

That was a golf club.  Party's over!

Creepy Crawly

In my previous stories, I've mentioned the differences in our kids' personalities, and the adjustments we've all had to make.  One of the very amusing adjustments (well, it was amusing to ME) was that Nikki was forced to develop a tolerance for insects.

At a very young age, Noah discovered his love for science, and especially for bugs.  When he was around six years old, he had a little bug cage and a net, and he carried them everywhere.  He became really good at catching things, and even hatched a cocoon.  A few years later, he said he wanted to be an entomologist.

One day, when Nikki and I were still dating, Noah went up to her and raised his bug cage about and inch away from her face and proudly said, "Look what I caught!"  Well, whatever it was, it was big, green, and really gross, and Nikki nearly jumped out of her skin.

The funny part is that up to this point, her kids didn't have much interest in bugs... but now they did!  They wanted to catch bugs, and they were asking for jars, and then bringing the jars (with no lid) into the house. Nikki was officially creeped out!


Eventually, Nikki did adjust to the presence of bugs around the house, once some ground rules were set about not bringing them into the house!  But there were a few more instances that caused her resolve to crack a bit.

Late one summer evening, we were hanging out on the back porch.  It was dark outside, and as usual, the insects were attracted to the light coming from inside the house through the screen door.  These mostly consisted of moths and june bugs.  But today, there was a large bug perched on the window that did not look much like the others.  Nikki saw this and yelled, "what the HELL is that???"

"Why, that's a praying mantis, honey" I replied.  This did not help.  If you've never seen a praying mantis in person, they are the creepiest looking thing on this planet.  They're like half robot, half alien.  If you approach them, their head actually swivels around to look at you.

"Oh, my God, do they LIVE around here???"  She asked.

"Well, they do now... Noah hatched a whole egg sack of them in the back yard!"

"You mean we now have two hundred of these creepy things in our back yard?!?"

"No, not two hundred... at least half of them get eaten by their siblings right after they hatch."  This also did not help.  Nor did it help to explain that they are very beneficial in controlling the population of other insects, but again she adjusted.  In fact, I would say that she has made quite a bit of progress, considering she has allowed Noah to have a pet tarantula.  However, she did warn me that if "that damn thing" escapes, she will move out to a hotel and not return until it's caught or dead.

I don't suppose it will help to point out that tarantulas can live up to fifty years!

I Don't Want To...

Some stories are just too funny not to tell...

Life with teenagers and pre-teens if full of emotional ups and downs.  Every one of our kids brings us joy, happiness and laughter in their own way, but they all have their "darker moments" and periods where they throw themselves (as we call it) a pity party. 

Maureen was in one of her "moods" one day, so she sat down at the kitchen table with an "I'm going to disagree with everything" look on her face.  I was in the kitchen with Nate giving him a haircut.  Nate noticed her pity-party-in-progress, and being the big brother that he is, he could not resist poking the bear a bit.

Nate: What's your problem?

Maureen: I'm bored.  I don't know what to do.

Nate: You could watch TV

Maureen: I don't want to

Nate: You could read a book

Maureen: I don't want to

Nate: You could pet the dog

Maureen: I don't want to

Nate: You could stand on your head

Maureen: I don't want to

This continued for a few minutes and got more and more ridiculous, so I weighed in...

Me:  I have an idea... you could sit there at the table and be obstinate!

........pause for her puzzled expression........

Maureen: What's THAT mean?

Me: Go look it up...

Maureen: I don't want to

I laughed so hard, I had to leave the room!

Will You Brush My Teeth?

Now, if I was surprised by the stark differences in Nikki's kids compared to mine, you can bet that Nikki was just as surprised the other way around.  Her kids were very independent and self-sufficient, while my kids asked permission for absolutely everything.  I don't know if this is a personality thing, or the fact that they spent most of their time with a male, or the fact that I was ex-military... who knows?  But I certainly never told them to ask for permission to use the bathroom.  Things like that got really annoying.

I did, however, with Nikki's help, realize that it may be time to let up on the reigns a bit with my kids.  One instance in particular that brought this to light was when Lucas asked her to brush his teeth before bed.  He was six years old at the time.

I have always been a bit of a control freak, and dental care was no exception to this.  I always helped my kids brush their teeth before bed when they were little, but this practice admittedly extended quite a bit longer than was necessary.  But of course, my kids - with their complete lack of independence - never said to me, "Dad, I can brush my own teeth now!"  Nevertheless, reality struck me like lightning when Lucas asked Nikki, "Will you brush my teeth?" and she responded, "Oh, my God, you are six years old!  Brush your own teeth!"

Even funnier than this was Lucas' response: he just stared at her with this complete look of bewilderment, like this was the last thing he expected her to say.  Then he looked at me - I was halfway between embarrassment and laughter - and I said, "She's right. You need to be brushing your own teeth."  And he did, from then on.

And while we are on the subject of teeth brushing...

On a different occasion, I was visiting Nikki (this was before our kids met each other) and her kids were getting ready for bed.  I was on the couch watching television, but I had a clear view into the bathroom.  They were in there messing around, flicking water at each other, etc, and I was just watching them and smiling.  They were much more entertaining to watch than the program that was on TV.  However, not one of them touched a toothbrush.  Then Nikki called out from the kitchen, "Did you kids brush your teeth?" and in unison, they cried out, "Yep!"

Well, I was not going to allow them to pull the wool over her eyes, so I went into the kitchen and told her that no one had brushed their teeth.

"WHAT?????"

She stormed into the bathroom and looked at their toothbrushes, and they were dry as chalk.  As a gale of motherly fury crashed over them like a tidal wave, they were probably thinking that they didn't like me hanging around so much anymore, for I had foiled their clever and brilliant plan!

An amusing footnote to this story...

The next day, I was helping Nikki unclog her bathroom sink.  I could tell that something plastic was jammed in there, possibly a toy.

It was, in fact, a toothbrush!

I Want That Silly String!

One of the things that has fascinated me about our children is how different they are in their personalities.  For example, my kids seem to have a healthy sense of "self-preservation," or just a general fear of getting hurt.  Her kids do not seem to possess this quality at all.  My kids would stick their toe in the water first - her kids would dive right in with a full belly-flop.

The child who is probably the most afflicted with this unhealthy lack of fear is Mason.  He must have an entire legion of guardian angels looking after him. 

One day, when Mason was about eight years old, he was playing with a can of Silly String, and the nozzle broke.  So, without the little contraption to release the pressure in the can, there was no more string.  "Ah," but Mason must have thought, "the string is still IN the can, so I'll just get it out!"  Awesome idea, right? Get the whole pile of string out at once!  Well, Mason was mistaken, first of all to think that it was just a big spool of string in a can, but he also did not understand the phrase CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE!

He went into my shop, got himself a hammer and a screwdriver, and... I think you know where this is going...

BOOM!!!!!!!!

Whatever that substance is inside the can was now all over the ceiling and the walls, and not string-like at all.  It looked kind of like someone put a stick of dynamite inside a Nerf football.  Mason was very shaken by this, and we explained to him how fortunate he was not to have lost an eye - like I said... lots of guardian angels. 

We also had a little discussion about aerosol cans.