190. The Cleaning Game

Since yesterday’s Genius Plan (GP) regarding cleaning did not go over so well with The Husband, I decide to ignore child labor laws and enlist the help of my son Tall in my never-ending quest for a spotless and pristine semi-picked up home. I even coined a term for this new system: the Child Aid Plan (CAP).

I envision making CAP like a fun game, so he’ll participate willingly.

“Tall, guess what!” I say with the same tone I might announce we had front row seats to Penguins on Ice: the Disney Adventure Live. “You and I are going to do some mandatory house cleaning right now!”

He takes the remote and pauses his show. “No, thank you, Mom,” he says politely, not yet comprehending the scope of mandatory. “I think I’ll finish watching this ‘Penguins of Madagascar’ marathon instead.”

Before I have a chance to beg, bribe, or psychologically torture him by throwing away his uneaten Halloween candy, my four-year-old son Short appears out of nowhere and declares, “I’ll help you, Mommy!” If this were a cartoon, he’d be wearing a super-hero cape with a giant letter “C” for cleaning. Since this is not a cartoon, his cape had an “S” for Superman (or sucker, depending on your perspective).

Short tugs at the Velcro holding his shiny polyester dress-up cape shut, and deftly removes it with a flourish. “I do it! I help you, Mom! I know how to clean!” He carelessly deposits the cape and a wrinkled granola bar wrapper in a small heap on the floor.

His enthusiasm echoes through the air like radio waves. I am instantly affected as well; we are both excited to get started.

“Okay, then, Short,” I say with fervor, as reach for his discarded yellow super-hero cape and granola bar wrapper.

So what if Tall wants to be a couch potato? I can grant him a brief reprieve this time, I think; I know Short and I will get a lot done working in tandem.

“What’s first, Mommy?” grins Short, like a new-hire employee who does not yet realize he’s beginning a dead-end job.

I look around, trying to assess the messiest area. This is like deciding which ocean is wetter, the Pacific or Atlantic. “Well, let’s start with the living room.”

Short walks in, taps his brother on the shoulder indicating he should move over, then picks up the pillow Tall had been leaning on. Short proceeds to expertly fluff the pillow with his little fists and put it back.

I could not be more impressed if Short had just rattled off the names of all our previous Presidents in chronological order.

All those many times (okay, five) that I cleaned the house are paying off in this Osmosis Moment. Short has obviously picked up on my superior cleaning techniques by witnessing me in action.

He stacks three books neatly together. He meticulously rearranges decorative seashells in their large wooden bowl. Next, he grabs a stray shoe and leaves the room.

Mistakenly thinking he has clocked-out for an unauthorized break, I call down the hall after him, “Where are you going?”

“To put my shoe away in my room where it belongs,” he answers confidently.

Wow. Internally I chastise myself for not thinking of this CAP idea sooner.  “Brilliant!” I say to no one in particular.

Short soon reappears and I tell him I’m going to get the vacuum. I go downstairs to the basement where I vaguely remember seeing The Husband put it once a few months ago. If you were a vacuum, where would you be? Think like a vacuum. Storage closet? No. Furnace room? No. Laundry room?

The shoulder-height pile of dirty laundry temporarily distracts me. Multi-tasker extraordinaire that I am, I seize this opportunity to start a load of towels.

In the five minutes that I am forgetting what I went down to the basement for in the first place, Short’s true Gifted Cleaning Abilities emerge: the entire living room has been picked up.

“Ohmygosh!” I blurt out upon seeing the room again, struggling to contain my disbelief. Then, with a regrettable absence of self-editing, “Tall, did you help him?”

“No, Mommy, Tall did not help me!” Short clarifies, momentarily miffed. “I did all by myself,” he nods proudly, Washington-Adams-Jefferson-Madison-Monroe.

I look around the room, my eyes searching for vestiges of the multitude of Lego’s, shoes, books, Halloween candy, stuffed animals, magazines, sweaters, papers, and other assorted junk that only moments ago littered the living room landscape. The room now resembles not so much a real family’s living room as a Designer Showcase House that has just been staged for its photo shoot.  How long was I in that laundry room?

My natural cynicism creeping in, I ask cautiously, “Sweetheart, how did you clean everything up so quickly?”

Short misinterprets my skepticism as approval and runs over to hug me. “I show you, Mom,” he says helpfully, as he pulls at my sleeve, leading me to the front entry closet. I nervously open the door.

As I feared, all the items that had previously cluttered our now-pristine living room have been hastily shoved inside this already overcrowded closet. Old tennis rackets are married to broken umbrellas and sharing space with torn magazines and borrowed sweaters and their illegitimate brightly-colored Lego children. Stuffed animals look on in disapproval. Library books and dirty baseball bats hover above us precariously, threatening to fall at any moment. With Herculean effort, I shut the creaky door.

Every Parenting book I have ever read is flashing warning lights in my brain: You can’t be mad at him: he’s only four; he was trying to “help”.

I bite my lip. Then I say calmly, “Short, I don’t understand. Why did you cram everything in here?”

He's eager to share his cleaning knowledge. His smile is now so wide I can see every baby tooth in his mouth, each gleaming white Chiclet, when he says cheerfully, “I watch exactly the way you clean the house, Mommy, and now I know the right way to do it, too.”

MOV
(“Mom Observes Vestiges”)

189. Breakthrough

Dear Diary,

Today I hatched a Genius Plan: I’m going to tell The Husband that from now on, he can choose ONE DAY per week to have a clean house. Not one day per week for me to clean the house; no. I should clarify here. One day that the house will be semi-picked-up. But “clean” sounds better, so we’ll go with clean.

Knowing The Husband, he’ll want specifics (he is an Analyst, for goshsakes, that’s what he’s paid to do: dissect information into an unrecognizable pulp of raw data). He’ll most likely say something like, “what’s your definition of ‘clean’?” (but remember, between you and me, what I really meant was semi-picked-up). So then, just to make him happy, I’ll itemize what my new Genius Plan includes:

• Making our bed
• Washing all dishes in the sink and/or near the sink or kitchen vicinity
• Doing all laundry, including putting it away (this should be worth two airline tickets to Tahiti, right there)
• Straightening random junk that happens to be lying around (things like the kids’ drawings, newspaper articles I’ve obsessively saved, take-out menus, and those pesky bills that the mailman religiously brings us)
• That’s it (isn’t that enough? there are only 24 hours in a day)

So, with this fabulous Genius Plan (GP), I will be off the hook from (what other people consider daily) chores a glorious six days per week. Woohoo! Why did I not think of this sooner?

(Even re-reading this makes me seriously question why my third grade teacher, Mrs. Young, opted not to place me in the Gifted Class.)

Here’s the really awesome part: The Husband, instead of being disappointed and disgruntled six days per week, can just EXPECT A MESS and set his exceedingly high standards aside (to give you an idea of his radical demands, he thinks I should rinse out my cup after I use it—I know! how did I marry such an unreasonable person?). Instead, with the new GP in place, he can be deliriously overjoyed on the one special semi-picked-up oops, I mean clean day.

Oh, I hear him walking through the front door right now. I can’t wait to tell him the GP! I’ll report back later how it goes………………

MOV
*****************************
Diary,

Predictably, The Husband was not as enamored of the new GP as I was. Bummer. When I explained the system and simply asked him which day he preferred for the “Clean Day” (remember—not cleaning day), he said with notable sarcasm, “Monday through Sunday.” Ha ha, obviously he doesn’t “get” the concept. Then he brought up the fact that he goes to work all day and why can’t I just straighten up the bare minimum amount (his idea of minimum was everything on my itemized list but—gasp!—daily) and then he reminded me that I have three and a half free hours per day when Short is at preschool and what was I doing during that time? (Well, duh: blog.)

The way I look at it is: Tall is almost seven. That is seven long years that I have been doing a billion trillion loads of laundry and dishes and snacks and bottles and and and. I think I deserve three and a half hours to do whatever I deem important (hint: not cleaning). When I say this to him, he says (not unkindly), “Sweetie, we just got that really nice exercise bike and put some expensive free weights in the basement. Why don’t you use some of that time to work-out?”

As you can imagine, his proposed Exercise Plan (EP) went over just about as well as my GP did with him: not very. Is he calling me fat?!? Or is he implying that I am fat?!? I have a mirror that can do that for me, thankyouverymuch, it is not The Husband’s job to reinforce what that damn fun-house mirror already tells me every day (“You’ve gotten a little chub-o there, MOV,”). Duh. I already know that. It’s actually The Husband’s job to murmur helpful and endearing things like, “Everyone knows jeans shrink 3 sizes in the dryer, Honey; you have not put on weight, our dryer is merely set too hot.”

Regrettably, we have scrapped my divine GP as well as The Husband’s less-than-stellar EP. Reluctantly I admit that Mrs. Young might have been right on her assessment of me after all.  So, effective immediately, we return to our previous system that has served us so well these past seven years: chaos.

MOV
("Move Over, Vacuum")

186. I Am Paying You, Right?

So I’ve scheduled my biannual professional house-cleaning, and the cleaning lady will be here any minute.  I’m doing what I always do right before she arrives: clean. I’m in the kitchen, scrubbing away, when The Husband walks in.

“Did Sonya cancel?” he asks innocently.

“What? Why would you say that?” I brush a stray hair out of my face with the yellow rubber glove.

“Well, it’s just that I thought we hired her to do this deep-cleaning, but then it looks like you’re cleaning. I don’t understand.” He blinks.

“Sweetie, can we have this discussion another time?” I say, as I tap at his feet with my mop, “Really, I’m under kind of a time crunch here. Can you please move? You’re in my way.”

“We are paying Sonya good money, you know. She’s not doing this for the love of Windex fumes,” he continues.

“I don’t want her to see the house this messy,” I respond as I pick a calcified orange peel off the floor.

“The house looks fine; I'm sure she's seen worse.  She's a cleaning lady. She cleans. It’s her job, remember? Honestly, if you're going to do it all for her beforehand, why don’t we just save the money?” he interrogates.

“She does a better job than me,” I say, as I set down the Q-tip I was detailing the faucet with so I can look him in the eye.

“You’re crazy.”

“Don’t call me crazy. And here, I need you to vacuum the living room.” I motion for him to take the vacuum. He does what I used to do as a flight attendant when a passenger asked for a pillow: ignores me and walks away.

I go into the bedroom and start stripping the sheets. I take the picture frames and spare change and perfume bottles from on top of the dresser and shove them all in a drawer, my rationale being that now Sonya can dust without things in her way. I pick up a stray pair of tights and put them in the hamper.

I hear The Husband go out the front door and then come back in. Then there is a weird noise in the living room, a noise like someone stomping dirt into the carpet.

I walk in the living room and witness The Husband stomping dirt into the carpet.

“What are you doing?!?” I screech, dumbfounded.

He has ceased stomping, and now he’s doing some sort of dance, a Dirt Dance.

“You’re getting the carpet even dirtier than it already was!” I say, barely masking my exasperation.

“That’s the whole idea. This will give Sonya something to do. This way she’ll really deserve her tip,” he grins, and I detect a sinister gleam in his eyes.

“What's your problem?” I ask, my voice full of resentment.

He gives me an unexpected hug. “MOV, I love you. You and I clean the house 99% of the time. Why do you hire a person to do a job, and then you do the entire job for them? Don’t you think that’s insulting?” He walks past me to the kitchen and starts making noises in there, too.

“You’d better not be making any dishes dirty!” I yell.

“I’m not, don’t worry, I’m just getting a snack,” he answers. Why doesn’t he offer me a snack? I've been so busy cleaning that I’ve run out of time for breakfast.

I look out the window and see Sonya’s car pulling up. I glance at the clock and realize I need to leave right now to be on time for my dentist appointment.

“I gotta run; I’m late!” I call out to The Husband as I remove my rubber gloves. He meets me at the door just as I’m putting on my jacket. He gives me a quick kiss.

“Here, MOV,” he says, offering me a small bag. “I packed you a snack for your drive to the dentist.” He winks at me.

Huh, that’s weird. Since when does he pack me a snack? “Uh, okay, wow, thanks,” I say rather ungratefully, not really knowing how to respond.  Then, as an afterthought, "I'm sorry I yelled at you.  You're right.  She's a professional, and she can certainly do her job today." 

I get in the car. Come to think of it, I am a little bit hungry right now. Maybe he packed me a roll or an apple? I open the bag, and staring back at me is the giant bag of Oreos.  Does he not realize I am going to the dentist?  Wait--he actually said, "for your drive to the dentist".  

I hesitate:  I didn't bring a toothbrush with me.  But I am hungry.  The Oreos are calling to me, "We're full of empty calories!  Come on, yummy!"  I sheepishly eat two cookies in rapid succession.  Then I accidentally catch sight of my blackened and sugar-coated teeth in the rearview mirror.

I guess the dentist will be doing his job today, too.   

MOV