New year, new us.
Prior to the arrival of a guest who was going to spend the night in my daughter’s room, I asked her to, well, make her room a little less pathogenic.
She huffed, she sulked, she whined, and when she discovered that her protestations had no effect, she finally set out to clean her room.
Ever since the kids were little we have had a NO FOOD ON THE SECOND-FLOOR rule. We have an older house and food would just attract mice. Something I definitely didn’t want in the bedrooms. Plus, there is really no need to eat in your bedroom when we have a perfectly functional kitchen and dining room.
Kids get older, they get hooked on their computers and over the years I’ve found that they think nothing of defying our house rule (even though I still yell about it) and taking their food upstairs.
But here’s the problem, the dishes and silverware go up, but they never seems to come back down.
“Where are all of my bowls?” I’d ask and get wide-eyed looks as the reply.
“Where the heck did all of the silverware go?”
Stunning silence.
Even when I sent them on exploration expeditions, they’d come back empty handed.
“I don’t know where they are. All I know is that *I* don’t have them in my room.”
In cleaning her room, my daughter came down with a grocery bag.
“If that’s garbage, then take it right outside now.”
“It’s not garbage.”
I peered into the bag.
And found years’ worth of silverware. From forks to eat the illicit mac and cheese in bed to spoons that had been hidden under pillows in a desperate plea to encourage a snow day.
So that’s where all my silverware has gone.
“They’re not mine,” my daughter assured me. “I just found this bag (filled with used silverware) in my room.”
Uh-huh, okay.
Sigh.
Well at least I have silverware again. Now if I could just find the thousands of single mittens and gloves the kids seem to have lost in schools and throughout our town over the years.
One step at a time.
***
Wendy Thomas writes about the lessons learned while raising children and chickens in New Hampshire. Contact her at [email protected]
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