I need a wife.

One of the frustrations of being a mom is the unbelievable amount of effort that you have to put into just maintaining the status quo in your house.

At least for me, anyway.

Because I’m not a “cleaner.”  I hate to clean.  And if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, then you know that I hate to empty the fucking dishwasher.

I don’t really know why.  In actuality, it only takes about 5 or 10 minutes to empty it.  But for some reason, it seems like an eternity.  And when I know it’s sitting there, taunting me, full of clean dishes waiting to be put away, I have this all-encompassing feeling of dread that overtakes my body.

Anyway, there are so many things I would rather be doing with my time other than picking up shit off the floor and loading and unloading that damn dishwasher.

But if I make the decision to, I don’t know, make a skeleton out of milk cartons for Halloween, then I am going to get behind on the dishes, and I will spend the rest of the day playing catchup on kitchen duty.

Plus, veering off the houselcleaning course exponentially increases the likelihood that I will end up with a sandbox in my living room.

Or that 2 brand-new boxes of tissues will have exploded upstairs.  Because what’s the only thing better than a dance party?

That’s right, a tissue dance party.

So I have to devote almost every free, waking second to cleaning the kitchen and staying on top of the laundry.

And it’s making me kind of crabby.

And forgetful.

I went off on Number 4 last week for losing her jean jacket.

I gave her this long-winded speech about being responsible, and putting her things away where they belong because I was sick of wasting my time looking for her clothes.

And then I found it.

Hanging in her closet, of all places.

Oops.

And then I went off on Numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 (again) after 4 water bottles were missing for over a week.

And I launched into the same speech about being responsible, and keeping track of things, and how I can’t clean up after 9 people alone, and how everyone has to pitch in, and how water bottles are expensive, and how they were all going to have to spend the weekend working to earn money to pay for new water bottles, because money doesn’t grow on trees.

And then last night I found the water bottles.

In the diaper bag.

Right where I put them.

Double oops.

I guess today’s lesson will be that even grown ups need to take responsibility for their behavior and acknowledge when they’ve treated someone badly.

Suddenly emptying the dishwasher seems kind of appealing.

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