Lazy Mom On The Rise

Eventually even extremely lazy, hot, menopausal mothers must rise and notice what's going on in the house.

The kids were strangely silent on Saturday morning. I got to sleep late because they managed not to fight over something which would necessitate coming into my room in the middle of a fistfight. I got up, quizzed them about exactly what they were eating that didn't require any cooking or milk, since they were eating in the den (chips for breakfast?) and then got ready for my day. Since Bar Mitzvahzilla was having a friend come over at 1:00, suddenly my brain began working. I thought: den. They're in the den. That didn't make sense. I had shoved all the extra rugs and giveaway clothes in the den the other day, blocking the couch and the TV set, so how were the kids in there?

So I rose from my side of the house, kind of like one of the presidents coming alive on Mount Rushmore - a rumbling, ominous, earthquake kind of sound - and went to investigate. Of course. They had just thrown everything on the ground - unrolled the rugs, scattered the clothes - all in a desperate urge to get near the TV set.

This resulted in the dreaded event: Mom's deep cleaning. I had the kids coming in and out of the room like that broomstick in the Sorcerer's Apprentice, back and forth, just shoveling garbage out of there. I then made the mistake of lifting the ottoman, where I found a time capsule of my children's meals of the past month.

My kids hate when I clean because when I do it I only do it like a lunatic, with a vacuum cleaner hose as a lasso, and holsters packed with Windex and Comet. I have no half way point. And whenever I do that, instead of just quietly helping, like that nice Sorcerer's Apprentice broomstick, they go existential on me. They say, "Why are you doing this, Mom? Why does it matter so much to clean?" or "Why is it so important that you clean this room, Mom?" Like maybe I should call on the spirit of Albert Camus so I could realize that a dirty room filled with food and garbage is really just a matter of my perception of reality.

So they pushed the lazy mom too far. Now food is banned from the den. They're waiting for me to cave on this but every time I walk past the den and see it so clean and remember crawling around with the hose attachment cleaning up crumbs from under the couch cushions, I think, No.