For Whom the Cap'n Crunches

Not one protein pair of my DNA has any inclination to tidy up. Yet, I would love to live in a clean, uncluttered home. Not all-white-surfaces, space port clean, just comfortable, people can come over without me having a panic attack tidy.

I know I've blogged about this problem before. But other than achieving health care reform with the rest of the country, snapping my house into shape is my next biggest concern. That is sad, isn't it. But my environment is causing extreme anxiety. As I sit on the couch to watch a show, I look around & my breathing goes short. The coffee table, such as it is, is covered from stem to stern with school papers, magazines (not mine), toys, remotes, random stuff I can't identify.

The floor is coated with strangely orderly lines of Legos, tiny cars, Pokemon, scraps of paper that have meaning to a 7-year-old and look like trash to me, and lately marbles. Then there's the cereal. My son loves to eat dry cereal straight from the box as a portable and constant snack. His preference is for Cap'n Crunch. He is constantly breathing crunch-breath in my face as he talks to me and making hideous crunch-eating noises behind me as he watches TV over my shoulder. I wish the Cap'n gets an assignment in the West Indies and goes away.

As my husband asks today if I've seen some sheets of DVD labels of his that he left in the living room, I hear him crunching as he walks, cursing as he looks. I found the sheets, they had fallen from the footstool where he left them into the pit of Crunch, toys and trash. Ick.

Usually, all of this mess is then accented with a nice, fluffy layer of cat hair. My house would make most people cringe. As a consequence, most people don't get to come here. But you're invited if you can ignore the mess or want to help me sort through it. I mean, I don't think it's at the "maybe we need to call Social Services" level but if added some dirty dishes, it might be.