Sunday, August 10, 2008

When "I'll clean up our room" brings fear to my soul.

"I'll clean up the bedroom," my husband said.

Mateo just went down for a nap. I was settling in on the couch to catch up on recorded shows I never seem to find the time to watch (and when I do, I'm often just listening while milling around the internet).

I was playing with the idea of reconciling the last credit card bill since I was going to have the time to do so while Mateo slept. I had left the bill on our dresser, piled with a bunch of other paperwork I needed to attend to. I started thinking about what my husband just said - I'll clean up the bedroom - and I immediately got up and went in there.

The first thing I noticed was how clean the top of our dresser was. I looked around. I turned around while looking around. I didn't see anything resembling my pile of papers anywhere.

"Uh oh," I said.

"What?" my husband asked.

"Where did all the papers go that were on top of the dresser?"

"In a plastic bag, in the top drawer of the filing cabinet," he said matter-of-factly. Because isn't that the first place anyone would look for things that have gone missing?

"Why do you always do this to me?" I said.

He shot me death rays in response.

I opened the drawer, took the bag out, dumped all its contents onto our bed, and started rifling through it. It contained our new daycare agreement that I've yet to complete and turn in, although I had almost finished it, two bank statements, one credit card statement, a code I needed to sign up for online payments at Mateo's daycare, our Dyson instruction book, and a bunch of various things that could be recycled.

I disposed of the items that could be recycled, grabbed the credit card statement, and left everything else on the bed as my statement of displeasure.

Why does "cleaning up the bedroom" equate to squirrelling my stuff away? And why would I not be told this was occurring in the first place? Ah, my squirrely husband. I love him to death but he should learn to only squirrel away his stuff and leave my stuff alone. I don't know how many bags and boxes of stuff we have in our condo with random things in it, thanks to Mr. Squirrel. I'm the type of person who needs to see things in order to take care of them consistently. You squirrel it away, it's a guarantee I'll forget about it.

Poof, gone, just like that.

Later that day, my husband left with Mateo to go shopping. He called me from the car asking me to bring him a sippy cup of water to take with him. I said okay, went into our bedroom, looking for my sandals, the easiest thing to wear on my feet in a pinch. I looked. And looked. And looked some more. Under the bed, in the normal spots he puts my shoes, in the closet (the most obvious place, you'd think, but not in our household). I couldn't find them. I finally put on another pair of shoes and took the sippy cup out to him.

"Where are my sandals?" I asked him. Because if I couldn't find them now, I wasn't going to find them later. They were gone.

"Oh....," he said while thinking. "They're in the closet, on top of the green hamper."

"Oh, I see," I said. I handed him the cup, said goodbye to Mateo, and went back inside.

Please, for those of you out there who squirrel, if you're going to do so, at least be consistent with your squirrelly spots and don't go making new spots out of the blue. Those who are victims of your squirrelliness can't keep up with the madness.

For the record, my sandals have never been put on top of the green hamper in our closet. Ever.

3 comments:

Neece said...

I call this a "clean sweep" in my house. It is like Jason just takes his arm and sweeps everything off a flat surface into something and puts it where nothing has ever been put before.

Nut Nut said...

That's so my husband. It's got to be a male thing.

At least he doesn't throw stuff away. I give him credit for that.

Kmommy said...

LOL!!