Items found in the laundry today:
1 Barbie shoe (Is there a Barbie Highway somewhere that has only one shoe on the side of the road? I found the other one then. Maybe Barbie’s mom wonders what happens to lone socks in HER drier. If so, I know where THOSE end up too! *smirk*
2. Two Dimes (Any cash I find I find, I keep. Call it a service fee.)
3. One shredded tissue (Yep It’s cold and flue season – tiny pieces of tissue everywhere *sigh*)
4. One tube of now-melted-and-on-the-clothing-forever, red lip-gloss -- oh joy.
While folding this morning, child number 4 meets me in the laundry room.
Her: Mom, have you seen my blue shirt?
Me: Nope, until you are doing your own laundry, you are stuck wearing what ever you have that’s clean in your drawers.
(Meanwhile, I quickly calculate in my head how many years that is until she is in Jr. High school when that momentous event happens. I deflate, five more years yet – rats!)
She leaves in a slight huff and returns in a few minutes wearing child #2’s Purple turtleneck, it’s sleeves dangling past her fingertips.
Me: That is your sister’s shirt.
Her: It needs to be baggy to go with the pants, mom! (she holds up the shirt to show how low the jeans are riding)
Me: But it doesn’t belong to you!
I decide on a different tack to battle her, she is working herself into a good fight about how I always take “their side” and never let her do what she wants… it’s all there waiting just behind her eyes for me to say the right phrase to trigger it out of her mouth.
Her: Did you ask her if you could borrow it?
Got her! There is no way she can wriggle out of that one, she is forever telling me how un fair it is that the younger one raids HER dresser.
Her: No.
I nod in satisfaction that I diffused that one quickly. I resume the folding and she notices the shirt that I now have in my hand.
Her: Can I wear that instead?
I look, and lo and behold, it is one that belongs to her anyway.
Me: Sure you can.
She snatches it out of my hand and makes for the downstairs bathroom to do her quick-change. I stop her half way there.
Me: Hey! What are you going to do with the shirt you have on your back?
Old argument about clothing being left where they stand…
She bats her eyes and smiles at me in her best “innocent” pretense.
Her: I am going to give it to you, of course.
Me: Good girl. You get to live.
Sometimes it's nice to see life from someone else's point of view. I am a mother, writer and amateur photographer. This is what the view looks like from where I am standing.
1 comment:
I hate the idea of going throug other peoples pockets, yet as the only chick in the house (two sons and a husband), it will be my chore forever.
Else I will have tissue pieces, frog pieces, string, and who knows what else...
(*)>
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