Sweet Pea

"Where the heck is my pickle fork? I can't keep anything nice with you kids around here."

My college room mate had these cool party napkins with this quote on them. (Only it didn't say "heck" but I'm trying to censor the blog for obvious reasons...) We of course thought it was really funny with it's retro picture and the whole nine yards but I can truly relate to it now. Today I woke to the sound of breaking glass. I truly can't keep anything nice around here.

With the addition of the dog to our J train last summer, my home has gone from "can look somewhat like the residence of a white trash hoarder" on occasion to "can look somewhat like the residence of a white trash hoarder and smells like a dog". The dog doesn't really smell all that often, but when she does I fear becoming one of those homes that you want to hold your nose when you walk in. I'm pretty paranoid about it. I would not mind bathing the dog, except that it would involve getting wet and the children getting wet, which in my mind becomes something that eats up approximately 90 minutes of my day. (Oh, and the dog has chewed through the hose so it becomes even more difficult...) So I leave the dog bathing to Jimmy. And when he doesn't do it, I take her outside and dump baking soda on her. We should NOT be pet owners.

So in an attempt to make the house smell a little better, I bought one of those plug in air fresheners...the wall flowers. I fought masking the smell, but I figured maybe these people whose homes I go to that smell good...maybe they're masking something and I'm just assuming their house is clean and fragrant and that they've got it all together. They could have a bird cage full of poop in the back for all I know. So bring on the wall flower.

It works pretty good until your 2 year old unplugs it from the wall, and your 8 year old, trying to be helpful, plugs it back in upside down. It slowly drips into your basket of Christmas books and into your husband's bible, which had fallen off the chair and into the basket of books. I smelled something strong and just thought the thing was doing it's job. When really, it was just $ down the drain. Or into the books.

Now, every week when we sit in church my husband opens his Bible, which has now truly become a fragrant offering, and wafts the pages in my direction, and the "sweet pea" smell goes up my nostrils it reminds me that I really can't keep anything nice. And the saturated pages also remind me that I have been given a gift. The gift of lack of control. Pretty much everything I do gets undone. Anything I try to control becomes a loose cannon. And nothing makes your life more exciting and fun. You could never do a scientific experiment in my home because to start an experiment, you need a "control". There is none of that here. We are a runaway train full of dirty kids, dust, missing pickle forks, love, laughter, and the strong scent of a fragrance thingy gone bad. All aboard!