Saturday, November 12, 2011

Cheeers to the freakin' weekend

Ever wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy and lay in your bed for a loooooong time and try to WILL yourself to go back to sleep because it is only 7:03 and WHY CAN I NOT SLEEP PAST 8 O'CLOCK??  


So you lay in bed and think about a whole bunch of random things like how you failed at seeing 11:11 on 11/11/11 TWICE yesterday, because in the morning you were at work and got a phone call so you were distracted, but then your high school English teacher reminded you via your Facebook status that you still had one more chance to see it at 11:11 PM.  But then you went to dinner with the love of your life and his co-workers, and when you got home you had to lay down on the couch because your stomach hurt really badly because you thought it would be a good idea to eat ice cream for dessert without taking a Lactaid pill, even though you know you are lactose intolerant and that you would be in pain and want to die later.  So while you were on the couch cursing yourself for eating ice cream, and cursing the love of your life for LETTING you eat ice cream, you were watching Seinfeld, and then you fell asleep sometime between 10:30 and 10:45 and woke up at 11:08, but since you are confused and disoriented when you wake up anywhere except your bed, you forgot that you should sit in front of your computer for three minutes so that you could see 11:11 PM and 11/11/11 underneath it.  Instead, you got up from the couch and went to bed in your clothes because you couldn't muster the energy to change into pajamas.


At 7:43 you accept that you are awake and then you roll out of bed and remember that you slept in your clothes last night for no apparent reason other than laziness, so you put on sweatpants and a tshirt.  You then open your bedroom door and are blinded by the morning light shining into the hallway, so your eyes start to water.


Then you see the shirt that you wanted to wear TONIGHT is sitting in the basket right in front of the washing machine so that before you went to bed last night you would remember to put it in the washing machine, because you were SUPPOSED to put it in the washing machine before you went to dinner but you forgot.  That shirt had to go in the washing machine asap, because said shirt can't go in the dryer and needs to line dry.  So you put a load of clothes in the washing machine.


And then your mom calls and is all chipper and says, "GOOD MORNING!!" and you croak, "hiiiiiiiiii mooooooooooooom" and she remembers that you are under the age of 80 and you don't have children on a Saturday morning, so you should really still be sleeping.  So then she asks if she woke you up and you say that you've been awake for 45 minutes but you feel like you have a scratchy throat.  She says that she hopes you're not coming down with something, and then says, "Well, I already talked to Peter about this-" and you cut her off and say, "You talked to Peter about something before me?!?!" and she continued about Christmas presents and ideas and then you laid down on the couch and cover up with a blanket and close your eyes while your mom keeps talking to you.  And then she says that she has to go, so you hang up the phone and continue laying on the couch.


After 20 seconds of listening to the washing machine run, you decide to turn on the tv, and when you start flipping through the channels, you think for the millionth time how you wish you had cable TV because NOTHING is on regular TV on the weekends until Sunday night at 7 PM.


While you're flipping through channels, you start to get hungry, but since you're not much of a breakfast eater, you don't have any breakfast food.  You get up off the couch and shuffle over to the kitchen wishing you had a pair of slippers, make a mental note to add it to your Christmas list, and then decide to detour to your bedroom to get a pair of socks and a hoodie, all the while trying to get your knotted hair out of your face and into a knotted ponytail.  


Upon entering the kitchen, you rummage through your cupboards and find a box of Betty Crocker quick-bread mix for Lemon Poppyseed bread.  You have the necessary ingredients, so you pre-heat the oven and throw all the ingredients into a bowl and use a wooden spoon to mix it all up.  You think about how hungry you are, and then when you put it in the oven you remember that it takes 35 minutes to bake, so you eat a couple pistachios to hold you over.


While the bread is baking, you move your clothes from the washer to the dryer and watch Gumby on TV.  


After you get bored with Gumby, you decide to open up your computer and go online.  While you're Facebook stalking, you see a Youtube video of the Ellen DeGeneres show that you watch, and then you start to remember how on Thursday night you were watching Youtube videos while Peter was working on his computer, and then you started watching videos of soldiers coming home and surprising their families.  Then you remember that while you were watching the videos on Thursday, you started to get teared up and Peter looked at you, but decided not to ask what's wrong.  You THEN clicked on a Youtube video that was a 10 minute long montage of clips of soldiers coming home and surprising their families, and a lot of the videos are of little kids, and you started getting a little more teared up and your nose started running.  You tried to hide your emotions from Peter because you didn't want him to roll his eyes at you, but then by minute 4, tears were streaming down your face, and Peter asked if you were ok and you said yes, but then by minute 6 you couldn't hold the emotions in and you were sobbing and Peter kept looking at you like you were a lunatic saying, "What the eff are you watching??  Are you going to be ok????" and you kept saying that you were FINE even though there were tears and snot dripping all over your face.  You really were a mess on Thursday night.


Then the kitchen timer beeps and you take the bread out of the oven, and wait for it to cool even though your stomach is eating itself and you really want to break a hunk of the loaf off with your hand and shove it in your mouth, but you decide against it because you got burned a lot in cooking class, and hot things on your hands hurt.  You sit back down on the couch and take clothes that you should have folded yesterday out of the dryer to fold today.  But then you decide that they are too wrinkled, so you throw them back in the dryer to heat up and you decide that THIS TIME when they come out of the dryer you will fold them RIGHT AWAY so that they are not wrinkled and you don't look like a schmuck.


You sit back down with your computer sitting on your lap, and then you  look at the clock and realize it's only 10:53 AM and that you've wasted your whole morning when all week you were thinking about what a productive weekend you were going to have.  


But then you decide that relaxing is productive.  So you put in Mary Poppins and lay back down on the couch.  Folding clothes can wait until later.


Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Monday, November 7, 2011

An apology to my mother.

Dear Mom,


I know that I should have said this a long time ago, but I think a part of me just didn't want to admit it.  Now, I've been pushed over the edge, and I just NEED to say something.


Yesterday, I had Peter bring 2 baskets of laundry over to my apartment so that I could make him look presentable and be confident that he is wearing clean clothes on a daily basis.  When I started sorting the laundry, towards the bottom of one basket, I began getting suspicious.  Then, I realized it.  He had put dirty laundry into a basket ON TOP OF already folded shirts and shorts and socks.  I. was. pissed.  Why the eff was he giving me CLEAN CLOTHES that were STILL FOLDED to wash?!?!


I don't mind doing his laundry.  Especially because he buys the detergent.  And he brings me out to dinner.  I don't mind putting his shirts in the dryer again because I neglected to fold the laundry right away and they got wrinkled.  I don't mind folding all of his clothes, or ironing his shirts and dress pants.  


What I do mind, is when I see clean clothes in the dirty pile.  And I mind when I see him take a shirt from the bottom of the pile, leaving the rest disheveled.  I also mind when he leaves his clothes in the basket instead of putting them in his closet or dresser.


Mom.  I realized yesterday that I am becoming... you.  I remember, all those years ago, you screaming at us after we cleaned our rooms because we would put anything on the floor in the dirty laundry.  I remember you following us upstairs and showing us our drawers in disarray, making us straighten them.  Threatening that we will have to do our OWN laundry if you EVER saw our drawers like that AGAIN.  And I also remember rolling my eyes at you.


For this, I apologize.  Because now that I have someone putting clean, FOLDED clothes in the dirty laundry basket, I send them texts like this "Peter Romenesko.  The bottom half of the basket of laundry you gave me is still CLEAN.  And halfway FOLDED."  And when he responds "Whoops!", I respond "THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD EMPTY THE LAUNDRY BASKETS I GIVE YOU OF CLEAN CLOTHES.  You're lucky I still love you and don't ABANDON you and make you FEND FOR YOURSELF."  


Why don't I abandon him, you ask?  Two reasons.  The first one, is because I fully realize that if he had a disheveled appearance in public, it would reflect poorly on me.  The last thing I want someone thinking is, "Who is the girl that is dating that poor schmuck?"  And the second reason is because I don't want to let his parents down.  They trust me to take care of their poor, helpless child when he is away from home.  I don't want them to think poorly of me.


So, Mom, I apologize to you now for taking advantage of your mad laundry skillz.  For every clean shirt I didn't want to put back in my drawer.  For every pair of underwear that I took from the bottom of the pile, leaving the rest in disarray.  I only have one person's laundry to do beside my own, and I am almost going crazy.  How you managed with 7 children and a farmer husband, I will never know.  


I also thank you for passing these skillz on to me.  Although, I'm not sure if it is a blessing or a curse, because I find myself cursing a whole lot when I'm doing laundry.


Love,
Your favorite daughter.