The Amalgamated Ash Heap of Apathy

I learned tonight that my kids are not human.

You’d think: human mother + human father = human kids. You’d be wrong, because they are pigs.

I found this out when I cleaned their rooms. That part was strategic, you see. The kids were away, staying at my mom’s for a week, which they do every summer. I scheduled a carpet cleaning service. Then I went to clear everything off the bedroom carpets.

Seriously, kid? And you wondered why those ants suddenly appeared?

I could write an entire Shel Silverstein-esque poem detailing the mounds of debris I found lurking under their beds, loitering behind bookshelves, and littering the corners of their closets.

Detritus scattered wall to wall,
Lego pieces, rubber balls,
Bits of popcorn, water cups,
Snack bowls (some still half filled up),
Candy wrappers, burst balloons,
Lite Brite pegs and plastic spoons,
Marbles, Shopkins (lots of those),
Random beads and dirty clothes,
Lollipops (well, just the sticks),
Stethoscopes from doctor kits,
Play-Doh and kinetic sand.
When did this get so out of hand?
LOL Doll accessories,
Hunted for on hands and knees,
Stubbed my toes on Barbie shoes,
That’s why this mom has the blues.

I ruthlessly stuffed garbage bags with scribbled-on scraps, Happy Meal toys, unidentifiable pieces of plastic, Solo cups, empty Ziploc bags, random papers from school, eraserless pencil stubs, cheap claw-machine animals, and old valentines. (Valentines are pretty much form letters nowadays, since kids have to write one for each classmate. Way to ruin a perfectly good Hallmark holiday, schools.) I saved every goddamn Lego, because my girls are obsessed with them.

One of several (I lost count) bags of junk I hauled out.

My husband sat on the rug with me and helped sort thousands of tiny objects into piles (categorized as follows: "garbage," "Lego," "return this game piece to its box," and "what in the hell is this thing"). He was the one who came up with the title for this blog.

Maybe one day my kids will read this and exclaim, “Mom! You threw away MY stuff?!”

To that, I say: all’s fair. One day, when I’m dead, they’ll have to sort through and throw away heaps of my crap. It’s the great circle of life and stuff. Literally: life, and stuff. I’ll do my best to leave as little junk as possible for them to sort through. On the other hand, I may become a pack rat, as payback for tonight’s excavation of the landfills they’ve been sleeping in.

I got 10,415 steps in today, just from walking the dog and mucking out the pig pens that were my children’s bedrooms. The outdoor garbage can is full, and garbage day is still five days away.

Clearly I will have to be more specific, and conduct more thorough inspections, when I ask my darling children to clean their rooms in the future.

Until then, I have four more days to enjoy my clean bedrooms before my sweet little angels of chaos come home.