Well, our bedroom is the transitional place for stuff coming down from the loft and stuff awaiting to go into the loft. But the trouble is that most of the stuff that has come down from the loft has stayed in the bedroom, and ditto for most of the stuff that's supposed to be going up into the loft. It's like a doctor's waiting room where the queue never gets any shorter and people still keep piling in through the door.
Our bedroom is supposed to be a child-free space, or at least a child-clutter-free space. Somehow the house gremlin keeps leaving lego and bits of toys that need mending, and screws and screwdrivers, odd socks, flannels, woolly hats, lolly wrappers, bags of seashells, shopping receipts, take-away menus and other assorted junk in there; when piled up on top of the sleeping bags, not-quite-fitting kids' clothes, dirty clothes, clean washing that never got put away, suitcases and carrier bags of wool, several Sunday newspapers from the previous month, six pairs of size 9 shoes (blame dh for that one), a large mirror, two 10"photoframes, 4 full-size guitars (dh), a large box of photographic slides, some glass paints, and a carrier bag of music cassettes from the 1980s, it makes it quite difficult to get to the bed every evening.
So on Friday I had a clearout and a rearrange of furniture. Furniture moving is my 'thing' at this time of year (look back at past blogs and I'm sure they'll be an entry for around this time of year involving furniture rearranging). It's cheaper and easier than decorating, and less likely to end in world war 3. And there's something about swearing and cursing at furniture that wont fit in the space you want it to fit into that is very good for the soul.
And I got the vacuum cleaner out! Now for those of you who exit the house every morning in a uncreased white linen suit with smiling happy CLEAN children and their neatly wrapped nutritionally-balanced lunches, drop the kids off with their prearranged equally elegant playmates and pop off to the gym via the nail bar, then you'd better stop reading now. Please.
Because after I'd vacuumed up most of the under-bed fluff (and that was even before I'd got to the bed, this was just the stuff lying around on the floor) and after I'd found the missing bit of toy that I was meant to superglue back onto it's source but had lost about 3 months ago (alas I recognised this missing part 0.2 of a second after it had gone up the vacuum cleaner and it is smaller than my fingernail and the colour of under-bed fluff) then I stuck the vacuum under the chest of drawers and sucked up a May bug.
Do you know what a May bug is? It's one of these...(also known as a Cockchafer)
They are kinda chunky and crunchy, especially if you step on one, and they have a nasty habit of letting their pheromones go to their head. So...in early Summer they set about swarming trying to find a mate. They fly around like some clumsy missile, bashing their head on windows until they find an opening, then tangle themselves in someone's net curtains, before falling down dead and crispy behind an item of furniture.
If they're lucky they might have had a bit of a May bug kiss and a cuddle en route, but I'm pretty sure most of them are too stupid to even work out that little bit of their life purpose, and are far too easily distracted by marvels of the modern human world (like net curtains).
So, that's the short life of a May bug; they do have a maggoty bit in their life cycle, but we wont go into that. Dh calls them June bugs, which is probably more approriate because I've never seen them in May, usually in June. Either way, May or June, thats at least a shameful 7 months that this poor crunchy creature has been curled up among the fluff on my bedroom floor.
And the moral of the story is..?
I'll leave you to figure that one out (answers on a postcard to...)
Anyway, clearing the bedroom has had it's benefits. In between the 3 year-old bottles of gone-off perfume, and bizarre hair products that I've never used (the products are bizarre, not my hair you understand), I found an opened pack of lollies that I'd banned the kids from having because I figured the chewy ones would pull their fillings out. Chewy things do that. We have experience.
So I'm now, as I type this, chewing my way through Matlow's Drumsticks (original raspberry and milk flavour). I don't care about my fillings - they're the real MacCoy super-strength mercury type and will stand up to any chewy sweet you throw at them (plus all the other things that I tell the kids they shouldn't eat/drink). At the same time I'm watching a Red Kite out the back window. I guess this is proof that I can muti-task.
"Rather yummy these drumsticks are" (said in a Yoda-like voice).
Just wishing that I'd banned the swizzels too. Though they're not half as good since they took all the artificial whotsits out of them.
2 comments:
I love a parent who joyfully eats whatever might ruin dental fillings. Closing your door to the bedroom really does make it go away, for a while :-). You seem to have an awful lot to do; a dirty room and some hi-sugar food, not that much of a transgression.
Your first paragraph made me laugh. And nod.
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