Tongue-In-Cheek … Foot-In-Mouth

When my kids where younger, like all younger kids, they were messy.  My son, Doug, would storm into the clean kitchen and like a hurried hurricane, grab this, that, and the other thing, continue along in his tornado trail, and leave in his path of distruction a Hansel and Gretel-like trail of cookie crumbs, fruit fragments, string cheese strips, and pizza pieces.

My daughter, Sara, was also major-league messy.  And you can tell exactly what she had been eating by simply performing an off-the-cuff inventory of the stains currently existing on her shirt.

“Okay, Sara, let’s see; you had tacos, lemon squares, hot pockets, and an apple.”

“Daddy, don’t forget this.”  (Point)

“Oh, look, double-stuffed Oreos.”

Fortunately our dog at the time “Taffy,” who before the kids arrived did not have an actual identifiable paying job unless, of course, you consider lying around and doing absolutely nothing ALL DAY LONG as an actual identifiable paying job.  But after the kids showed up she began contributing to her keep by following behind the toddlers carrying a spatula and a plate tidying up their tidbits.  And on some occassions whenever food hit the floor she’d swoop in like a barking hairy vulture and inhale the scraps, sometimes devouring sections of the hardwood floor at the same time.

However, the kids were not the only ones in the house who were untidy.  I had and still have a tendency to pile up my empty beer cans until you need a backhoe and a coal-minor’s cap to dig your way through from the living room into the kitchen.  And as you might well imagine, my can-collecting-custom bothered and STILL bothers my wife, because she is one of those annoying neat people who are always busy cleaning something.  And when she finishes cleaning something (e.g. the septic tank) it becomes so sterile you could store someone’s organs in it.

So whenever she complains about my continuous can clutter, I assure her I will toss them into the garbage, that is, “when I get around to it,” which according to her can take centuries.  But as far as I am concerned, cleaning and picking stuff up is a question of timing: Man Timing Versus Woman Timing.

EXAMPLE

Woman Timing:

A woman’s dumb timing tells her that a little detected dust in the den means it is time to vacuum the entire house, to include the surrounding neighborhood.

Man Timing:

BUT manly man timing tells us men that the little detected dust in the den means to wait until it forms into dust bunnies which are roughly the size of tumbleweed, and which eventually sprout legs, crawl out from under the furniture, and hold the entire family as hostage.

So, anyway, pull up a mop and bucket and join me next time where I will tell about how my wife and her woman timing forces her to scrub the tub after EVERY time she uses it.  Scrub the tub AFTER using it! Ha!  You took a shower, right?  When you take a shower you use water, right?  You used soap during your shower, right?  And water + soap = clean, right?  So why bother with any extra scrubbing?

Silly woman.

Sure, some soap scum does have a nasty tendancy to accumulate.  And like during my college days, if you let it go for more than a semister, it will eventually overtake the entire male dormatory.  BUT soap scum is a product of water + soap, so it MUST be totally clean, right?

Silly woman.