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Christi Diggs
on Jun 20 2013 - 06:00 AM
In lieu of good taste, request people bring money
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Lindsay Metcalf
on Jun 19 2013 - 06:00 AM
My top five most important moments of the summer so far
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mara williams
on Jun 18 2013 - 06:00 AM
Hey, manchild, mama says: clean your room, wash the dishes, don't drink and drive.
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Emily Parnell
on Jun 16 2013 - 06:00 AM
Eating fresh, local produce is good for body and soul
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Jim Cosgrove
on Jun 13 2013 - 06:00 AM
I just want to buy some pants. Please, turn down the music.
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Apparently pretty darn hard. Just ask my oldest.
It appears he didn't eat the banana stashed in his bag about a week ago. It went in the bag bright yellow with a tad bit of green at the stem.
Yet this perfect banana didn't come out of the bag until Friday, and by that time it was black and mushy, goo oozing from the peel. Did I mention it was on his bed?
And that it sat on his bed, buried under a gobbled up comforter for at least two days?
If I hadn't gone into my oldest's bedroom yesterday morning (he was at his dad's), to put some clothes away, we may be in a world of hurt right now.
The flies would have kept swarming, the gnats just growing in numbers. The smell would have just been nasty.
After digging through the comforter to find the banana, I looked around his room and wondered where the heck have I been. Not physically, but mentally.
I mean I'm in that room a few times a day so how in the world did I not see the mess it had become. I mean there were cobwebs on the window and a pile of things from his old backpack, the one he used last year and was done with three months ago. The trash hadn't been dumped in about as long.
Somehow, oldest has gotten a free pass to have his room as messy and disgusting as he wants.
Now, no one would accuse me of being a Felix Unger type (gee, I'm aging myself aren't I?), but I draw the line on rotten fruit burrowed in my bed.
One wouldn't think it's too unreasonable to ban fruit in the bedroom, to require a bed be made at least every two days or something. Maybe take out the trash once a week and shovel a path through the room.
I mean at this rate, when he's a grown man, his apartment will be fit for the squalor they often show on the television show COPS. Today a banana. In the future? We're talking bags of rotten fruit, a week of dirty dishes in the sink. Those gnats would then be rats.
Other moms I know just laugh and say a teen's room is supposed to look like this, especially if the teen is a boy. But come on.
Michelle Obama makes her kids make their beds and clean their rooms -- every day. And I'm digging for rotten fruit, fanning my face to keep the gnats from flying up my nose or in my mouth.
So of course I over reacted (What, me?). But just a little. I declared that his room be cleaned spotless by Wednesday (with a little flexibility thrown in if homework is heavy this week.) Everything must be put away and the shelves dusted. I said I'd help with the cobwebs.
Then I mouthed the words I had heard so many times as a child that I vowed to never say them to my child. "Clean it how I would clean it."
It's funny how a rotten banana will make you say the things your parents would say.
Sounds like my nine-year-old's room. What happens when I start grad school? Too much to fit in a day. And I kept prioritizing down making her clean her room. Well now we're digging in. And, yes, I have found banana peels mouldering in her room. Gack. So far the room is looking much better. We're just tackling a little bit each day. There is currently a path you can walk through. We have thrown away loads of trash. There is a big bin filled with items she may have outgrown but isn't ready to part with yet to be stored downstairs. And a similar size pile of items for giveaway. She's been working hard, and so have I. Phew!We haven't had the rotten fruit. Our problem is the crumbs. Crumbs everywhere! And pop cans left on the dresser. I have never insisted on a spotless room but I'm afraid that critters and bugs will want part of the action.If he's anything like my DD, dirty dishes will gert shoved under furniture. I was missing several plates when I bent down to pick something up off the floor in the livingroom and found 2 plates that she and her friend had used for waffles. Yes, I blew a gasket.Last year my then 5 year old had a moderately clean room. There was just this ONE tiny piece of food left in the corner... She started getting this rash on her body and a neighbor said she got that with ant bites when she was little. Yep. Ants IN HER BED. Actually, under her mattress. Tons of them along the bed-lined wall. I was so mortified. It's not just for aesthetics that we have them clean their rooms, eh?Maybe it is because I am a freak of a mom but I don't allow snacks & drinks to leave the kitchen. I will have tippy cup go walking down the hall from time to time but it comes back very quickly when I say its name. We have always been like that. Even my dd who is now 23 doesn't leave food/drinks around her apartment. But she is somewhat of a clean/germ free nut. I know it happens though. My sisters & I did it all the time. Snack wrappers, soda cans (an occasional beer can-whoops), apple cores (my mom hated those) and so on. But just the thought of a rotten banana - ewww & the gnats that come out of the woodwork!That sounds like my 10 year old son. He is completely oblivious to his surroundings. I just hope that SOMEONE will take him off my hands some day and marry him:) I guess it is par for the course for boys, because I remember my mom finding bags of funions smashed on the carpet under my brother's bed, along with reminent pieces of pizza. SO GROSS!!!!Clean it like I would clean probably won't even happen when he's an adult. That's why you have to have girl children. : )I did an LOL at the heading of this blog...it well, reminded me of our own banana fiasco. It was the first week of June, I had a dream of an hour of peace while kiddo attended swim lessons. I packed our swim bag with care. Then all hell breaks loose and he doesn't like the teacher so I spend the entire hour coaxing him back into the pool instead of flipping through my backed up piles of Real Simple mags. I promised him a banana and a trip to the zoo if he would ONLY go down the water slide on the graduation day. I lovingly slipped the banana in the bag-and TOTALLY forgot about it. I could not figure out the knats-EVERYWHERE until I found that black furry banana that was swarmed with creepy crawlies. I felt like such a scuzzy mom! It happens to all of us (at least I like to think so!)
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