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At Some Point Everyone Needs to Come Clean

May 31, 2007 by Kathryn

There is really never a good time to clean the dining room floor or change my clothes or shower. There’s always another meal-tastrophy on the way, another boogie to be wiped on my shirt or another workout to be done.

If I clean the floor after breakfast, it will be filthy again by snack time so I should wait until after snack… and after lunch… and after dinner… but the kids will probably want breakfast tomorrow (jerks!) so what’s the point?

Lately I’ve been focusing a lot on exercise, cardio every day and strength training a few times a week. When I come home from the cardio workout, the kids are often up and needing me and it’s too late to shower. So I plan to do it during naps but if I don’t get my weights in, then I don’t want to shower if I’m just gonna get sweaty again but then it’s bedtime and why shower if I’m about to get up and workout? Blech!

I do shower regularly but the timing is tricky and I always look like a Sweaty McGreasy-head. I also can’t keep a shirt clean for more than 30 minutes. I should carry a stopwatch and my internet phone around and live-blog how long it takes for my shirt to get dirty. That’s bound to land me a book deal… of some kind. (Chicken Slop for the Spastic Mother’s Dirty Shirt? — Catchy, no?)

This morning Dan told me Magoo had woken up with a crazy-bad diaper so he’d had to hose him off riot-patrol style in the shower. Magoo’s grown accustomed to this, gets in the tub, grabs onto the towel bar, yells “SPREAD” and plants his feet insanely far apart with his back to the shower-head wielder. If he’s done the crime, he will serve his time with dignity and military precision.

Me: Did you have a yucky diaper this morning?
Magoo: Yess!
Me: Did Daddy spray you in the tubby?
Magoo: Yess!
Me: Are you all clean?
Magoo: No!
Me: Do you have a clean bum?
Magoo: Yess!

And it’s true. The rest of him is never clean. It is in fact the opposite of clean. And the clean bum is a fleeting and ironic triumph. Why is he only clean in places no one can see? Dirt and slime billow around him in a Pig-Pen-esque cloud and besmudge everything in a 30 yard blast radius. What was that? You’ve never seen slime billow? You should get out more. Probably with a 2-year-old.

Filed Under: Aspirations, Save Me From Myself

Previous Post: « The Things About Me
Next Post: The Last Thing Magoo Needs is More Camo »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Thea says

    May 31, 2007 at 11:49 am

    LOL! This is hilarious! I am SO WITH YOU on timing your shower. Ugh. But good for you for excercising. That’s great!

  2. Kimberly says

    May 31, 2007 at 11:56 am

    Oh my. I’m giggling to myself again.

    When I first saw the title of the post I squirmed in my chair and thought, but I don’t want to have a shower!

    I have serious showering issues. I manage to have one every day or two, but oi…why is it such a chore?

    Oh, and I once kept my shirt clean for three hours! So neener neener neener!

  3. Liz says

    May 31, 2007 at 12:48 pm

    I am up for the live blogging for the clean shirt. I would indeedy link to such a project.

  4. Mary says

    May 31, 2007 at 12:58 pm

    This is one of your funniest posts! Pig Pen Magoo!

    It’s not the shower that’s the chore, but all the work after the shower to get dry, deod the pits, dress, brush and possibly dry the hair, etc. So much work!

    Good job on the exercise. I find that when I do real exercise, I have to take 2 showers that day – one in the morning and one post-exercise at night, which is seriously double the work! My problem is, I am not a person who can get away with only having a night-time shower and be good to go the next morning, all fresh and clean. I NEED a morning clean-fest or I look like a greasy kid right out of the 90s grunge movement.

  5. Stephanie says

    May 31, 2007 at 12:58 pm

    He yells SPREAD? That’s funny.

  6. Awesome Mom says

    May 31, 2007 at 1:05 pm

    There is nothing worse than taking the time to mop the darn floor and have it looks like you have not even touched it five seconds later. That is why I hardly ever mop unless we can’t walk through the kitchen because our feet are sticking to the floor or I know that someone is coming for a visit.

  7. Carrie says

    May 31, 2007 at 2:05 pm

    I am in for SUCH a rude awakening very soon…

  8. Jen says

    May 31, 2007 at 2:26 pm

    I have actually written a poem about my kitchen floor, so great is my hatred for keeping it clean. I just mopped it yesterday, for crying out loud, and it’s already filthy again!

    And I totally concur that you should live-blog the shirt. I feel like I don’t even have clothes anymore. Just giant snot rags that I spread on my body each morning, waiting to be defiled.

  9. Melissa says

    May 31, 2007 at 2:31 pm

    My kids are always filthy. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out how they do it!?! We will get in the car, clean, drive for 5 minutes to the store and by the time we get there they have dirt all over their faces. Some kind of goo down their arms and I don’t want to know what’s on their legs. It’s some kind of alien phenomenon.

  10. Heather from One Woman's World says

    May 31, 2007 at 2:59 pm

    So true, and so sad. I’m so tired of feeling dirty all the time!

  11. Farm Wife says

    May 31, 2007 at 3:42 pm

    I’m working on a new theory. I’m not going to mop my kitchen floor any more. I’m just going to let the filth accumulate. I figure the dirtier it gets, the higher my children’s resistance to multiple forms of micro organisms will get. In 6 months or so the bubonic plague will look like a spring cold to us.

    And forget showering. What’s the point? The only people who get close enough to me to smell anything are too young to notice where the stench is coming from….besides, they smell too.

    I can spend all the time I save not mopping & therefore avoiding the pediatrican’s office and not showering sitting on the couch eating bon-bons & catching up on Days of our Lives on Soap Net…because you know, that’s all us SAHM’s really do anyway!

  12. The Pumkin Patch says

    May 31, 2007 at 4:08 pm

    SO SO SO True yet so funny!

  13. Pops says

    May 31, 2007 at 4:32 pm

    Quoth Dermot (a lodger at Mrs. O’Flynn’s):
    “How queerly my shower bath feels!
    It shocks like a posse of needles and pins.
    Or a shoal of electrical eels.”
    Quoth Murphy: “Then mend it, and I’ll tell you how.
    It’s all your own fault, my good feller.
    I used to be bothered as you are, but now
    I’m wiser — I take my umbreller!

  14. Heffalump says

    May 31, 2007 at 4:53 pm

    Can you imagine living in the olden days when they wore the same outfit for days on end? They make it look oh so romantical in the movies…but really…if they showed it realistically?
    Personally to help me with the dirty shirt syndrome I dress in layers. Sure a T-shirt is just fine around the house, but when I go shopping or whatever, I put a fleece vest over it, or a sweatshirt. In the winter the sweatshirt starts out at the top, and as things get messed up, the layers come off. We should invent a peel away shirt front with made of fabric that is sticky on the back, then when you get something on it, you just peel that layer off and toss it in the laundry…(the sticky back is specially formulated to always be there, even when washing, and never to stick permanently, kind of like post it notes…We could have ten or so layers of shirt front…that might last a day!

  15. Jana (sidetrack'd) says

    May 31, 2007 at 6:08 pm

    This post is hilarious! It’s amazing the things we take for granted pre-children – like showering on our schedule instead of theirs!

  16. KYouell says

    May 31, 2007 at 6:19 pm

    Six weeks ago I had 1 child & struggled to get a shower every day. Ah, the good ol’ days! Now I have 2 & struggle to retain my hearing. I dream about a long hot shower. I don’t even remember baths.

  17. Jessica G. says

    May 31, 2007 at 9:36 pm

    When I shower, I risk having my house redecorated…with a red crayon. Silly little me, I took a shower while the Boy was still awake and came up to find he had decided the play kitchen just wasn’t fun unless he could take a crayon to every surface. That’ll learn me.

  18. Mary C says

    June 1, 2007 at 5:06 am

    That is hilarious! Little Pig-pen! My boy is like that, too. Love that he knows the “Spread’em” drill!

    I have to take my showers at night. Then I at least feel like I have rinsed off the day’s goo.

  19. Lei says

    June 1, 2007 at 6:32 am

    Like I’ve said, time is cruel to mothers!

  20. Lisa (qtpies7) says

    June 1, 2007 at 7:26 am

    I mop the floor every 6 months if it needs it or not.
    I hate mopping, the stupid thing just gets dirty again right away. Try living with 8 pigs, I mean people, and see how long it lasts when you’ve been on your hands and knees scrubbing because the floors in your 97 year old house have pits and grooves and deep gouges where everything gets stuck in that a mop can’t do any good.
    Its time to mop over here, can you tell by my attititude? LOL Its getting done this weekend. Or at least by Tuesday afternoon.

    Dadgummed floors, I think I need brown carpeting.

  21. Sheena says

    June 2, 2007 at 6:48 am

    sweet! I gotta teach my 2 year old the spread em drill!!!!!
    That would be so much better than “bend over honey!”
    you’re funny!

  22. Joy says

    June 3, 2007 at 10:59 am

    Sounds like my house!

    I horrified a dear childless friend last week by blogging about how I hadn’t showered from Mon – Fri. She said she’d stick to just 1 child so she can still shower (we are about to have 4) and I didn’t want to burst her sweet little bubble that just one child will do it to ya too… Somehow those priorities change when the little ones invade your home.

    Those dirty little kids of mine sure are cute though. Good thing, some days!

  23. The Silly Witch says

    June 4, 2007 at 6:47 pm

    Every time I go out into public I notice that there’s something on my shoulder from towing Bardo around. I too feel like a big Kleenex. And I admire your dedication to working out. I discovered that Bardo will just st at the bottom of the shower and play, so luckily I’m getting that shower in regularly. I deserve it.

  24. grammyelin says

    June 5, 2007 at 10:31 am

    I can just see Magoo baring his essentials for the hoser. (Does that make him the hosee?) You do what you have to do, man.

  25. sherry says

    June 6, 2007 at 8:48 am

    I have the exact same thoughts about our kitchen floor. It’s especially frustrating because when I do mop it at a random time, it’s inevitable that everyone – including myself and my husband – will then drop something. And naturally it won’t be dry bread, it will be sauce-covered pasta or a big blog of jam.

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