So I am supposed to be folding laundry. Like enough laundry for at least 7 households with 4 people in each home. Where the fuck did we get all these clothes? Jesus did we just buy new stuff cause I didn't wash the dirty stuff? I totally think that is what happened. I mean I remember rushing out and buying socks...oh yeah and underwear...at like midnight because I hadn't done laundry and I didn't feel like sorting, then washing, then re-sorting, then folding, then placing lovingly into piles that my kids and husband would never put away and then dog or cat (back when we had a cat) would lay on said piles or worse pee or puke on them and then the whole vicious cycle would repeat itself and we'd still have no clean socks or underwear.
I do definitely remember buying a few choice items in a manic fit at least a couple hundred times over the past few years...but seriously...this is ALOT of clothes. It covers my couch.
It was covering my dinner table and part of my kitchen counter but then I decided to be all "domestic goddess" and cook dinner. But I couldn't cook dinner without going to the grocery first. I did that after I decided that moving laundry from kitchen to living room was HUGE improvement. But then I was like "oh shit I totally won't have all this done before Jon gets home, must create a diversion...oooh, I know...I'll cook". I figured it was cook or offer up more sexual favors. I was still kind of tired from the last go around and plus figured I should do something where the kids could benefit too. I'm so giving that way.
So I went to the grocery and spent WAY too much money for our one income household. It was all necessary items like fruit, veggies, chicken, pasta, stuff to make lunches, breakfast items, laundry detergent (for when I finally do fold laundry and it inevitably gets dirty again) and wine....yeah, can't forget the wine. Then I remembered that Jon was going to play poker last night and I scrapped huge dinner that I planned on cooking as a diversion to the huge pile of laundry now taking up residence on out couch and coffee table.
I decided on just pasta with veggies and chicken. I'd do some garlic bread too. It would just be me and the girls, so it would be fine. Liv had been begging for this pasta for a month now so I knew that she would be happy. Han's only concern was that there were pea's in it. I told her to pick them out and she seemed content.
We got home from the grocery and I made Han sit at the newly cleared dinner table to start her homework. She was more than slightly pissed that her original work space of the coffee table, planted firmly in front of flat panel t.v. was not up for use. I reminded her that homework time was for homework and NOT getting caught up on all that has occured on Disney Channel for the last 8 hours that she hasn't been watching it. She rolled he eyes in that over exagerated way of tweens these days and I'm pretty sure that she silently flipped me the bird from behind her backpack.
I mean I can't prove that she did that. But then again I can't disprove that she didn't do it either. I could have just asked her and been all "what are you doing with your hands behind your backpack"? And then she would have been "nothing...gawd...I didn't do anything". And I would be all "did you just shoot me the bird?" And she would totally shoot back "no-ah...gawd...why are you so paranoid? Why do you think everyone is out to get you? Why are you busy wasting time trying to figure out what I was doing behind my backpack when you could have folded some damn laundry?"
It really was best that I just let it go.
I set to putting away the groceries and Han set to talking up a storm. I know where she gets it from and God do I wish that I could PLEASE stop being punished for all the times I literally set my mothers ears to bleeding from all the chattering I did. I swear she has a quota of words that she is determined to meet on any given day and she won't stop until she hits it. I'm not sure what that number is but when I find the fucking dial I am turning it down to a 3 digit number.
In between cleaning and putting away groceries I kept having to say "Hannah homework"....literally every 15 minutes was marked by that phrase. Then came the homework related questions.
Hannah: Mom, are you good at social studies?
Me: Depends. What do you need to know?
Hannah: It's questions about the government and the Constitution.
Me: Hmm....you can try me. If I don't know we can just wait for your dad to get home.
Hannah: Well are you good at math?
Me: Depends. What do you need to know?
Hannah: Are you good at anything?
Me: Well, I'm making you dinner. So yeah...I am good at that.
Hannah: This is the first time you've made dinner in awhile.
Me: Hannah...do your homework.
When Jon got home I put him on homework duty. They knocked it out before he left for cards. I knocked out a bottle of wine shortly thereafter.
I later got a text from a girlfriend of mine regarding dance team tryouts that both her daughter and Hannah will be attending this afternoon. It had to do with the
FAME forms that Hannah was so desperate to have me fill out but then left on the couch. In the packet they requested a copy of the first 9 weeks grades. That's all fine and great....only 1 teeny tiny problem...the kids have only been in school for 4 maybe 5 weeks. Jacklegs. How can we give you something we don't have??
She was just as confused as I was about it. I told her that given the fact that they are the school and they should know that we can't possibly have this that I am sending the packet without it. I swear if there is a problem because that is missing I am totally pulling my kid out of public school and putting her in private. If I have to pay $10,000 a year so that the school can use common sense then so be it. I mean...really book smarts you can learn but common sense...that shit is priceless!
By the end of the night I was drowning my sorrows of possibly being stupider than my 5th grader yet smarter than the public school she attended. It was a bittersweet revelation. All I could do was sit back and watch the Jon Gosselin interview on Pritime Family Secrets. It made me laugh that it was on a show with the words "family" and "secrets" in the same sentence since outside of knowing what color underwear him or Kate are wearing that day we, as a viewing public, are pretty keen on what these two train wrecks are up to at any given moment.
I just can't feel sorry for the guy. I can't feel sorry for Kate either. I did however realize that in one of the clips that they played of him and her in a toy store from a few years back that I TOTALLY talk to my own Jon that way. At times. I vowed to stop that behavior immediately and then toasted my new found change with a shot of Firefly sweet tea vodka.
Apparently...though....I toasted one too many times cause when my Jon came home a few hours later and hadn't brought the promised McFlurry from a text he'd sent me, I went off. Kate Gosselin style. It was "Jon & Jess plus 2" in my bedroom. Thankfully I fell asleep a few minutes into the tirade. Not so good for the husbands ego, but at least we didn't have camera's, witnesses or our children involved.
I did have to swallow my pride, choke down the dry mouth sensation that follows any night of ill fated shots and apologize. He forgave me and thank god for that....I mean, I'm pretty sure Hannah is gonna have way more homework tonight and I just can't bare to be humiliated two nights in a row. I don't know if I have enough liquor for that.
~JP
