Weaponry

I just spent the past hour cleaning out the crevices in my kitchen cabinets with a steak knife. Not sure why it's important to start that job close to midnight, but suddenly I couldn't let another moment lapse without getting down on my hands and knees and obsessively scrub. My initial intention was to unload and then reload the dishwasher because I always feel bad about myself when I leave a nasty pile of dishes for our nanny/housekeeper. I know she judges me, but leaving a nasty pile of dishes is just so blatant and screams, "JUDGE ME!" As I started to put some cups away I noticed the thick layer of film that was wedged between the cabinet and the decorative frame and I was struck with paralysis in pure disgust. So, I abandoned my efforts at unloading the dishwasher (my LEAST favorite job in the whole world) and starting picking out almost 9 years of dust and grime. Unloading the dishwasher is so loathsome of a task to me that I think cleaning out crevices with a steak knife was infinitely more appealing. Before anyone gets too congratulatory on me, I must confess that I only did 4 cabinets. I think there are probably about 30 more to go.

Every once in a while I have this fantasy that my husband takes my kids away for a whole week so I can completely clean my house like it's never been cleaned before. Of course, I know I'd spend about one afternoon cleaning and the rest of the week surfing the internet or doing puzzles, but it's my fantasy so I can keep on dreaming. For instance, tonight while I was cleaning baseboards I had never before even laid eyes upon, I wistfully imagined myself scrubbing all the baseboards and cleaning grout while Lee communed with the kids at his dad or mom's house. Then I wondered when you sell your house, do you have to do things like clean baseboards? Is that a deal breaker?

I'm not the only one awake at 1 am. Lee is out in the den watching some Richard Gere movie. He could stay up watching movies till 1 am every night. I get too distracted (by things like baseboards and chopping up watermelon and putting it into 8 different plastic containers). He's on his way to bed now. I can hear him mulling around in the kitchen. He's in our bathroom now making me admit that I'm crazy as hell.

"Admit it! You're crazy! That's what is wrong with you! You just spent the past 2 hours cleaning grout or some shit like that! Admit it!"

This is coming from the man who does lock down every night in our house and it takes him about 15 minutes to check all the doors and set the alarm and make sure the oven is turned off. About once or twice a year, something will be askew in his nightly beat and then he has to "check the house for killers". This entails opening every closet, looking under every bed, going into all 3 attic spaces (including the one in the garage that he has dead-bolted because a killer might come in through the garage, go into the garage attic and crawl over to the house and come in and kill us in our sleep). So all I"m saying is I'm not the only one who is crazy in this house.

Actually, speaking of crazy and basically just poor decision making in general, I think Lee gets the gold star today. On my way back from yoga (where I practically passed out from the heat and my lack of hydration) I call Lee to tell him I'm on my way. He tells me that our new neighbor (who is really an old neighbor who moved away and then came back. But that is a story for another day) has a friend who owns a bow shop (as in bow and arrow) and he is going to take the boys to go look at them, but not to worry, because HE wasn't going to buy our 11 year old son a cross bow. If he wanted one, he was going to have to put it on lay away and buy it himself. Seriously. A cross bow for an 11 year old. So he can keep us all safe during the apocalypse? In a really nice, not at all bitchy or judgmental way, I asked him if he really thought it was a good idea, letting our 11 year old get a cross bow? He didn't really seem to appreciate the areas of concern that I had such as safety and not killing his brother or sister or one of the dogs or generally not encouraging scary weapon love. But, because I was so nice and laid out my arguments so rationally, he quickly changed allegiances and agreed with me. When I got home he proudly showed me the text he sent to our neighbor telling him that he had to tell Evan he was too young for a bow. "See, I sent this before I even talked to you on the phone." Even though the text was timed some 10 minutes after we hung up. And I want to send our kids away with this man for a week?

Evan has a one track mind. He's relentless. He won't let this damn bow thing die until he has one in his hands. Every conversation will involve bows and earning money to acquire said bow and taking lessons to learn how to use a bow and do I think it's illegal to practice in your own back yard and look at this web search I just did that has a cost analysis of bows. Other than target practice in the back yard ("I won't practice back there till I'm really good mom."), which I told him I was fairly certain was not legal ("Can people have handgun practice in their backyards?", I asked him), he told me he was going to use it to go hunting. We are not a hunting people. My husband doesn't hunt. I don't hunt. My uncles hunt and so does Lee's dad (if you can actually call it hunting. He just pays a bunch of money to kill birds they let out of a cage), but generally, we aren't a killing shit kind of family. But somehow my oldest has a deep and abiding love of killing defenseless woodland animals.

One last story then I really need to go to bed because it's late people. Another one of Lee's shining moments in parenthood was the time he let Evan buy a Bear Grylls bowie knife. ("He wanted it and he wouldn't shut up about it. I made him use his own money.") About a month ago our middle kid had a friend over. They were hanging out outside in the front yard and I was folding clothes in the garage (it sure sounds like I do a lot of housework, huh? Fooled ya!) and I look out onto the driveway and there is middle kid's friend, sitting cross-legged making a spear with the bowie knife. His mom texts about the same time as I witness the spear making. She asks how the kids are doing. I reply, "Fine as long as you are okay with your son bringing home a finger in a zip-lock baggie with ice. They are busy playing with knives right now, I hope you don't mind." She responds, "You're funny." Then I'm like, "No, I'm serious. It's like Lord of the Flies over here. I just overheard part of their conversation. They are playing Hunger Games and making spears and hurling them at each other like javelins." And then I reassured her that my 11 year old was supervising and her kid's glasses served as protective eye wear. She's a forensic psychiatrist so her answer was, "The overwhelming appeal of Hunger Games to preadolescents proves innate aggression drive in kids! I know it's a nerdy thing to say, but I just love listening to them play!"

See, not everyone can be great parents like us and we have advanced degrees and shit!