I'm not sure what happened to me this weekend, but my inner "Jim Laning" came out! For those who don't know him, that is my dad. I have vivid memories of waking up on Saturday mornings and the first thing we had to do was our chores. Now, I know I have nothing over Laura Ingalls, but I hated doing chores! The reason was because of what chore Lindsay and I were selected to do:
Clean the Basement!
Now you Hoosiers might not be able to relate as much because you guys don't normally have basements, but this would be the equivalent of having to clean out your garage (that you don't park in, btw) or your attic. My parents had turned half of our basement into a playroom which was wonderful during the week because we could mess that thing up sooo bad, but then Saturday would eventually come. It was judgement day for all of our messiness.
Lindsay and I would spend from about 8am to noon down there. Thinking back on it now, I'm sure we could have done things a little bit quicker but here's how the schedule looked:
8am: Talk about how cruel our parents were.
8:30am: Start crying about how unfair it was that we were made to do this slave labor.
8:45am: Vow we would never become like our parents when we got older.
9am: Decided we weren't going to let Jim the tyrannt tell us what to do so we would start playing Barbies.
9:45am: We would have a fight over who got the favorite dress or skirt and Lindsay would inevitably say "I quit!"
10am: We decided we needed to work together to get the basement clean and we hatched a plan to throw all of the toys in the play area that was built in under the stairs.
10:15am: We would call down Jim the Tyrrant and have him check to see how clean the basement was.
10:16am: He would always check under those stairs! "Nope, you girls aren't done. Call me when you have really cleaned it up."
10:17am: Hysterical screaming and crying would come from Lindsay and I (why was I sad that I wasn't pregnant for a girl again???) until we realized he probably didn't care that we were crying.
10:18am: We decided our parents just didn't love us. We would have to run away once we made it out of the basement.
10:45am: We finally decided that we should clean up so we could get out of the basement before it was dark out.
11:30am: Basement was cleaned up the "right way."
11:45am: The vaccum would inevitably start eating the carpet and smoking.
12pm: Dad would come down and free the carpet and tell us that we had done a great job.
You would think that we would have straigtened up and not gone through this drama every Saturday, but we never did! I think it was a good thing we moved from that house when we did! I might still be down there!
Anyway, I have gone off track terribly. My whole point of this blog was to tell you that I corralled my inner Jim Laning and put my boys to work this Saturday!! I had chores for everyone except for Owen and we were done cleaning the whole house top and bottom by noon!! And there was no drama!!! And I was able to get all of the laundry done. What a wonderful thing.
And now that the house is clean, I am a happy camper. It is amazing how not having something like a messy house to look at can totally alter your mood. I was even able to read a whole book in 3 days because of all of my extra time. Now this is the life........and I know it won't last long because in February, Baby #3 is going to drop us on our heads and make life hectic again so I need to enjoy it while I can. But hey, that's what life is all about, right???
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