Stupid Addict Anonymous

I have discovered something about myself.

I have a stupid addiction.  

It's not I'm addicted to stupid, it's what I'm addicted to, is stupid.  

Most of the time, I have it under control.  I just don't go into stores that sell the stuff.  

But yesterday, neither printer would work and my daughter needed to print up her paper asap.  

So I found myself at the store formerly known as Kinkos.

That's right, office supplies and motivational books, these are a strange Achilles' heel to my liberal arts brain.  

I see audio books, "Organize your life..." and I'm thinking,  I could use that.   I see a large swath of pens, and I know I need that...and the motivate others book.  Maybe it could that help with getting the kids to do their chores?  I need a planner...post-its, and we need a stapler...before you know it, a simple printing job has turned into a crazed shopping spree.  

Within minutes of leaving the store, I suffer buyer's remorse, especially when the promising Motivate others CD sounds so 70's psy-pop in its language and thinking, I wonder if it was put out by K-tel records and just digitally remastered.   Half way through the Organize your life stuff, I'm bored to tears.   The planner, it's good, not great, but it will take time to become familiar.  The kids have already raided my purse and all the pens are gone.  

But I look at that cheesy motivational cd and it's time to face this stupid demon. 

I resolve, I will not, will not, will not, buy any more office materials or business literature.  Not a USB, not any liquid paper or a ream of printer paper or ink, nothing.    I write down my new promise to myself in the planner, feeling grown up, proud of myself,  free.

My son comes over, "Mommm.   The printer still won't work and I need this paper tomorrow." 

We must go...my mind is already drifting down the aisles of the store, I look at my motivational how to get people do do things book.   "Give directions and simple commands."

"I'll take you to the store if you take care of the dishes first."  
To my surprise, he agrees.  

I still have to keep my promise. Maybe I'll just let him go into the store, and I'll stay in the car.  

While he's in there getting it printed, I'm reconsidering my resolution.  

Why?

He did the dishes.  The motivational book worked.   Maybe there's more in there that might help me to get them finish their homework or do the laundry.   My optimism returns and it occurs to me, it's not that the addiction is stupid, it's that the addiction itself, makes me stupid.  

The Cost of Sweet Nothings

The News is screaming these days about the price of food.

It seems to have increased by a third.

I haven’t noticed, not because I don’t shop, or because our budget hasn’t been hit.

I haven’t noticed, because for the past five years, whatever food I bring home gets ripped through by a horde of happy raccoons within five minutes of darkening our doorway.

So I’m aware that it cost more, for the price of air.

The other day, I spent two hours at the store. I had brought a list. I had planned a menu. All the organizer/budgetary/helpful how to manage your family type books and web sites suggest using such things. I had even used coupons. I felt like a good mom. I unloaded and then went to pick up my little darlings from Mother’s Day Out and school.

When I got home, there was a need for a double diaper change which took me out of commission for a few minutes, followed by a phone call and a frantic search for the Spanish to English Dictionary for one’ child’s homework. I returned to the kitchen to prepare snack.

You know that 70’s commercial about the American Indian crying by the side of the freeway at the sight of pure devastation?

Green apples in refrigerator –gone. Well, okay, that’s alright, at least it was healthy. Sure I planned to hand those out the next day for school lunches but…hey…the apples are still here, on the table. Five of them have bites out of them. Who was the apple eater? Goldilocks had sampled the fruit until she found the one that was JUST RIGHT. Then there was the little matter of the two children opening a cereal box, and a fourth making two peanut butter and banana (Nuts, that’s my back up plan for tomorrow’s fruit in lunch), sandwiches.

Lest one think I only deal in healthy issues, I checked the closet. The box of five sets of Zebra Cakes? Open. Down to two. The Chips Ahoy, the only processed cookie my middle son eats? A sleeve is missing.

OKAY. I do not use my inside voice. WHO HAS EATEN? I wait for responses. It seems, each of them have now had a snack, they just each chose different ones, leaving six separate foraging trails for me to follow. I declare war. I threaten major chaos. I promise a semester worth of snack baggies filled with nothing but raisins and celery if I don’t see some major clean up detail. I promise to purchase freeze dried space bar ice cream and store brand beef jerky instead.

They think I’m bluffing.

So I remind them, I write fiction. I write articles. I could make a query to a magazine…Frugal Mom or some such on how to economize during this fiscally turbulent time. We’ll live on oatmeal, pasta and eggs for a month. It will make a great piece, feeding a family of ten on just ten dollars a day…what a hook…

There is a flurry of cleaning activity and a few verbal commitments to follow the menu schedule. Still, there is a seventh child I haven’t seen yet. I take the remaining fruits out to the second fridge to keep them safe until the next day. There is my four year old in pure chocolate bliss, having found the Double Stuff Oreos and done just that.

“These are my favors Mom.” He says in a goey voice. There is a layer of top soil cookie crumbs on his hands and face. He offers me a cookie.

Looking at the refrigerator, I eat the cookie and take another. It’s very expensive rare air, but it still tastes good.

For more tastey mental treats, try http://www.humor-blogs.com/!

The Maid of La Muncha

Whenever I feel life is just too easy, I buy a magazine.

Yesterday, in a visible sign of my need to make work for myself, I bought one of those "organization" rags.

The helpful pages tell how "you too can live in a house with other people and have a debris free existence." It looked so touchable and neat, I wanted this quieter life and felt I could have it if only I knuckled down and disciplined myself...so, I became a Knight Errant...

To Clean...the impossible Clean...
to Sort all the socks with their mates...
to fold...till the pile is nothing...
to sweep all the cobwebs away...

this is my Dream...to order this home...no matter how hopeless...

I tried the first method --Donate, Discard, Keep. It sounded promising.

Armed with a trash bag and a laundry bin, I went to the first room, resolute in my determination to sort everything in my two sons' room into one of three piles. After five minutes, it became apparent that I would need a forth pile for the clothing that belonged in another person's room, and a fifth pile for clothing that was out of season and a sixth pile for the things that my helpful toddlers kept bringing to me.

The magazine never said anything about toddlers undoing the work as you go, wearing the donations on their heads, reclaiming things from the trash, dumping the keep and jumping into it like leaves.

I felt I was playing Go fish with my kids who kept sorting back through the discard pile to find matches. Not one to give up easy, I put on the television to distract my "helpers" and started in on the 1/3 policy in the living room.

Now I get tunnel vision when I write, read, draw, watch TV or work. The world shuts away for me and I don't notice what should be obvious. I forget this is not what happens to everyone.

Helpers need snacks and thus the immediate urge to eat ten minutes after breakfast will superceed the desire to be entertained. So while Don Quixote was busy doing other things, like sorting laundry, Sancho and Dulcinea had to help themselves, which they did. Cereal and Hershey's syrup seemed like a good combo. Chocolate flavored Cherrios...they make a lovely mosaic on the floor. They even stick.

So we stopped in the living room and headed for the kitchen to address the newest distraction. That took wiping, sweeping, moping and no small amount of prayer. Then I had to clean up the artists. Bath time and new clothes, meaning more laundry. I wiped down the bathroom while they splashed and felt vaguely virtous for getting one room done while still providing appropriate loving care for my children. A mometary moment of victory for the Knight Errant.

But there remained the upstairs project I had half started. I admit, I was tired and the clock indicated it was near noon. Lunch time, the kitchen would be undone.

There was only one thing to do. Running up the stairs with my two helpers in tow, we bagged up everything we had already sorted, put everything else back into laundry baskets and called it a day. We went to celebrate at McDonalds.

And the magazine?

I put it in the recycling.