...shrewd business moguls say what?

It is a regular spring occurrence that a bird hits a window. It startles me at first and then I look outside to make sure there were no casualties. My windows are not as clean as they should be, my house for that matter is not as clean as it should be. My kids are not as reverent, polite or quiet as they should be. But for one brief moment in the THUNDER DOME that is mornings around here, I was thankful that some feathered friend thought my window was so clean it was nonexistent...until I went out a couple of hours later and found it dead in front of my mailbox. RIP friend, you made my day, for a few hours. Goals.

So, it got me to thinking, of course instead of cleaning. There are phrases/clichés in life that just exist. Some are clever ways of ending conversations,"...and that was that." Others are meant to be said to give a verbal nod to not know what to say, "...it is what it is." Some are said out of frustration, some are uttered out of lack of understanding and others said so often at this point they have lost their meaning entirely. At any point, if there is one, when will we as humans stop speaking and start doing.

When a baby cries, it is their way of communicating, because they cannot actually take care of themselves. They get older, become verbal, can drink from a glass, yet you are destined at least once to hear, "...can you come wipe my butt..." What? Why are you asking instead of doing it yourself? The older we get we are still like babies, trying to communicate despite the fact that we can accomplish ourselves more if we just acted instead of speak.

There are a few choice phrases in this house that my husband and I have had to come to terms over. Sadly not one of them is, "...mom, you've worked hard, go take a nap," but I digress. These choice phrases, admittedly, I have let fall on deaf ears over the years, but currently they are at an all-time high. There have been a few discussions of banning them all together in this house. Not ironically they are usually spoken about 2 minutes after said discussion. Now, I would find no fault in the following phrases:

I cleaned the bathroom.
Dinner was good (with a clean plate).
The laundry is finished and put away.
I just flossed my teeth.

But, let us be real here...these will never probably happen. I think I would be frightened if it did. The phrases on the docket for banning in this household are as follows:

That is unfair.
I am bored.
I am hungry.

These cyclical phrases are uttered by all of my children no less than 2 times a day each. The hunger comes about 40 minutes after eating, mainly because did not finish the last meal and they are bored. The boredom comes from not doing what they want to do instead of what they need to do, or at least help out. The unfairness in this house runs rampant as various ages should be allotted different privileges. Over time, I know I have just tuned out some utterances whilst being said. I would scoff it off, and mutter something under my breath and move on. But, after a while, it resembles a powder keg. At any given time, I would like to be about a two on the tension scale. Hearing the afore mentioned phrases, it climbs to a nine more quickly than I would like. With the air of spring, there are changes coming. I am lucky and grateful to have high functioning little humans in my midst...it's time to put that to good use.

"That is not mine," almost up there with "I have no idea how that broke." Well, we enter a dicey intersection with these mantras as I call them, as they seemed to be spoken like prayer in this house. New rules: If you have to step over it to get where you are going, pick it up. If it is broken, fix it. Seems like something that should not have to be actually verbalized, but we are keeping it simple around here.

Laundry encompasses everyone. No nudists in this house, well at least not on a daily basis. If someone is bored I guarantee there is a pile of laundry somewhere in this house that needs cleaned, folded or put away. Fighting boredom and being productive, it is like we are living in Neverland without a wardrobe change. In this house there are more wardrobe changes than at a Beyoncé concert....thus the never ending laundry, never ending FUN.

Yard work can be done by all who are upright and walking. No one needs a detailed list of things to help with outdoors, nor do they need to confer with their union president, I am the union president. As I was explaining this to my dear children I told them merely asking to help is the first step, the rest will fall into place (why else would I have no less than 6 rakes in my garage?). Plus, there is the satisfaction they will learn to appreciate after a couple of hours of hard work, or at least I hope.

Lastly, when the above mentioned are discussed the phrase that can follow incites a slight tinge of rage"...how much are we getting paid?" I count to ten, make a mental cocktail, remember that these precious offspring might one day be shrewd business moguls and say, "...more money than you had before you started the job. Mom is going to take a nap."

...its epic, isn’t it?

That blissful moment when you catch yourself and realize…it isn’t the nudge of spring (don’t get me started on Mother Nature, clearly she was out too late last night). It’s not that world peace is near…not that all of the kids are asleep…not that you have mastered liquid eyeliner at the age of 41. The one quiet moment when you realize…you have all of the laundry caught up. It is a glorious feeling, so glorious so when I caught myself realizing it, I had to sit down and share…because it won’t probably last for more than an hour or so.

My life is filled with laundry…mine, theirs and at times the random Lego or action figure. I used laundry as an ever-present escape for a while, going to the basement to lug/fold/pretreat, time alone to my thoughts and the monotonous action of keeping my offspring clean looking and not smelling. As children grow, so do their clothes and this one time escape became almost an upper body workout of lugging, folding and pretreating. When my oldest children like to have about 4 wardrobe changes a day…not because they have that delicious B. O. that for some reason I can only smell, I went on strike. But I’ll get to that.

Then Mother Nature. As I afore mentioned, clearly she was tying one on last night, as we went from 60 degrees to a real-feel-temp of 22. Really? Just yesterday my children were cheering my name, honestly cheering, as they woke up in the morning because I declared it was a “short day”…obviously our kicks come easy around here. This morning? I was suddenly, enemy number one. Okay, well whatever you are all learning in your science classes at school? Yeah, the jig is up…that’s right, I CONTROL THE WEATHER…just one more perk of my “smother” title. But back to the bliss…

I miss the days of school uniforms. Polo shirt, khaki pants, white socks and done. The most I had to do was put them out and they would do the rest. But when you have a child, who thankfully buys most of his own clothes, but steadily mentions, “…um, that sweatshirt belongs on the gentle cycle, 20 minutes in the dryer with a dry towel and then hung to dry…”. UM….WHAT? I am sorry, I am not your maid or your entertainment director on this cruise ship of life. When it comes to laundry, I don’t sort, I don’t bleach and everything in the dryer if you are not of voting age. That is when the strike began.

Now, my OCD when it comes to life is sometimes like a mole on a person’s face. You see it, you know it is there, but eventually you don’t even notice it because of their sparkling personality or dazzling wit. So laundry was, my monkeys- my circus. But then, in hind sight quite symbolically, on Martin Luther King Day, it hit me…I want to declare, I need to declare, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, I’m free at last…” And the craziest thing happened…it worked. Now we tweaked some things, I’ll be damned if I let a kid wash four things and call that a full load! I collect or ask for collection. I don’t sort. I wash everything together. And the only special attention goes to the ladies in the house and their unmentionables…because that crap isn’t cheap.

It took about a month but a strange realization set in. Suddenly, a few people in my house began to realize that the laundry is like a 24 hour factory, without the OSHA check-ins and the union meetings. Why were they folding laundry so often? How was it possible? They just folded laundry yesterday. As they were asking this, most appropriately it was cocktail time and as I answered them, looking over my cocktail, I responded with, “Welcome to my LIFE…its epic, isn’t it?”

Now, just to be clear, I’m not running a sweat shop out of my home. I just know that at times I’m spread thin, and any little task, otherwise known as a chore on the mean streets of America, that can offset my most convincing “Mommy Dearest” impression is for the greater good. And it was good. It was bliss. Did I mention that it is an early-out today? Someone walked in the back door, and immediately put something in the washing machine…nice while it lasted.

...turning a cell...

DO YOU HEAR THAT? It is a splendid noise, like the first birds of spring, chirping their little hearts out or a gentle breeze of a new season playing the wind chimes that hang by my back door. It is me, doing TWO LESS PEOPLE'S LAUNDRY...of course, they don't really know what has hit them yet...meanwhile, I lie in wait.

Taking a page from Sun Tzu's Art of War, I have waged a silent war in this quiet house in little Canton, Missouri. The war is being fought in the name of all adults who painstakingly perform the task of...laundry. My rage, slightly less seething, has reached its plateau. While I have not so silently threatened the "laundry strike" before, today I am carrying out what countless others have dared to threaten before...I'm finished.

Of course I have threatened before, "Where was that stuffed? That's it, you are doing your own laundry from now on, maybe you will understand why my eyes are yellow and the vein is bulging in my neck!!!" All spoken on deaf ears, with a look of, yeah sure...she's a control freak and will never let it get to that. Well, that day has come my friends...and it has been a long one coming.

Laundry has ALWAYS been my nemesis. At times it has quieted my mind, given me a reason for being or just been another bullet point on my unwritten resume that I can fold a fitted sheet. In a house with four kids, the laundry is something that always has to be done, always collecting and something I'm always trying to get ahead of. It is a love hate relationship, laundry and I. While most women take a secret moment with something they really desire at a clothing store, cut to me at Home Depot where I want to whisper sweet nothings to a shiny new washer and dryer package. I know, I need to get out more.

I found myself, last week "Turning a Cell," so to speak. A tiny bit of fear strikes into the heart of my children when I get that look in my eye, knowing their room really needs cleaned. It's akin to a prison show, where the Warden decides the start "Turning Cells" to find any contraband. So, I decided that I needed to check up on the Talls' room to get some things picked up. It was there, as I was putting away their clothes, found jammed into every corner of their dressers, which I found a few articles that I had ironed. Really? I ironed this, for what? I ironed this, told them that I did, and told them to hang it up so the twenty minutes it took to do it wouldn't be wasted. Wow. That...well, that sucks! What the hell was I doing with my free time besides making sure they didn't look as if they had gotten dressed in a van down by the river? Then, besides a few choice swears that I muttered under my breath, I said three words. I. Am. Done.

So, like Sun Tzu, I have silently waged my war on laundry. What the Talls are blissfully unaware of is that I stopped doing their laundry. Done. Finished. I have done laundry, trust me when I really say it never stops...but not theirs. When I warned last evening about my strike, Oscar eluded to the notion that he thought that was some sort of child abuse, to which I almost spit out my coffee with laughter. This morning, Abe was looking for something in the dryer. I said, you're not going to find it there...He looked at me. After informing him that I no longer did their laundry, he looked at me. I told him that if he didn't want to be wearing his bathing suit to school by Wednesday, he had better collect the laundry and get to it.

The next battle will be the pissing match between the Talls of whose turn it is to launder their unmentionables...but that isn't my fight. My battle, forever ongoing, experienced a small victory today, flushed with the notion of a lesser load of laundry and a mom's most important aspect of warfare...sticking to her word.