I Just Can't Win

Today I slipped on a magazine that Sonshine had left on the stairs, and fell halfway down the stairs while carrying a large bin full of clothes. Luckily, I fell on my back instead of on my pregnant belly. This accident came less than a week after impaling my foot on a broken pick-up stick that Sonshine had left on the stairs. That wound is finally healing, after I had to operate on it myself. When it was still hurting like heck after a few days, I opened it back up and pulled out a piece of dead callused skin that was still attached to the edge of the wound and had gotten tucked inside. I didn't notice it the first time because the entire thing had been covered in blood.

Sonshine, in retaliation for the guilt trip I gave him (which he so richly deserved), purposely slipped on my satiny robe, and then complained that I had left clothes on the stairs and he had slipped on them. That was rich-- I keep trying to throw that robe in my clean laundry pile. He keeps kicking my clean laundry pile all over the house even though I have begged him to leave it alone, and that was how the robe ended up on the stairs in the first place. The last time I saw that robe before his "accident", it was (as usual) halfway between my clean laundry pile and the stairs.

I just can't keep up with all of this. How do those other mothers do it? I walk into their houses and they're clean as a whistle. I keep thinking that if I ever get my house to look like that, it will be because I invest in a tranquilizer gun. When I catch the kids starting to make a mess, I'll just pull the trigger and they'll sleep while I clean up what they started. That would be nice, because the way things are right now is more like I'm washing dishes while Bagel pulls milk cartons out of the trash, Sonshine cuts up papers into tiny little pieces, and Princess pours cereal all over the floor. For every mess I clean up, three more are being made. I just can't win against that kind of exponential growth.