A few weeks ago, after having a couple of rough weeks, wellness-wise, here in the Douglas household, the school-age kids were finally back in class, I was starting to feel human again, and the house deserved a proper degermification. I readied my house-cleaning arsenal of cleaners and devices, and I vacuumed every crevice, corner, and carpet while sweeping every smidgeon, section, and surface. I mopped and scrubbed everything in sight until my arms damn near fell off. (Workout? Who needs a workout?)
At one point, I even got on a dining chair and cleaned off all the crap on the fridge we’d been storing since 1985. Which, y’know, is funny, considering:
- we only moved here in 2014,
- this house wasn’t built back then, and
- what was I saying?
OH YEAH. Crap on top of the fridge. Riiiight.
And then sneezing started. My dreaded dust allergy had reared its ugly head, and the bags under my eyes seemingly started collecting all the loose dust, saving it to torture me later. The next thing I know, I’m in the bathroom washing my face, eyes, and frantically trying not to itch my face off all while looking like I went 12 rounds with Rocky Balboa.
It was then that I noticed it.
The silence.
It was deafening, and it most certainly meant that I’d been a little too preoccupied with my cleaning and not enough with what my soon-to-be preschooler was doing. (And, usually, she’s my little cleaning sidekick, too!)
I shot upstairs like a lightning bolt. Did she turn on her brother’s video game system to play a game? Was she painting herself with nail polish, or the walls with markers? I tried not to default to the worst, but she IS quite skillful in ways her siblings weren’t as far as parental torture goes, and I couldn’t get up those stairs fast enough. I saw the door in her big brother’s room cracked, and decided to check it first. Of all the scenarios that ran through my mind, what I didn’t expect was to find her happily napping all on her own in her big brother’s bed.
And, whewwwwww!
(Besides, it was probably a good thing she was asleep – I might’ve scared her with my enormously puffy Allergy Face of Doom™).
