Reliability is Everything

Even at forty years of age (yes, that happened back in July), I continue to be amazed by my own idiocy at times. You would think I would learn from some of my own mistakes but no, there they are and I just keep going back and making them again and again and again. I have come to realize there are some things I can just rely on but for some reason that reliability does not come to mind when I am in the moment.

Like when I decide a trip to Target sounds good. Am I the only one who has to deal with customer service or have some sort of interaction with a manager every single time I visit this store? It goes without fail. Something will ring up incorrectly and the cashier cannot correct it after I have been rung out. Or my organic nectarines are ringing up at $1.69 each instead of per pound and for some reason, the cashier does not understand why there might be a tiny problem with paying $1.69 for one nectarine. Just today those little teeny boppers in their bright red polo shirts in the customer service department were treated to not one, but two visits by me. First, I had to make a return upon entering the store. Then as I left, I had to go see them again because the cashier did not ring up my coupon. Will I go back? Certainly. Darnit if I don't get sucked in by those $3 off meat coupons on the days when the Laura's Lean beef tenderloins (filet mignon) typically expire. That spirit of the chase and a good deal on meat are generally what lure me into going to Target in the first place.

Parents brag about their kids...a lot. It's natural, I know - we all want to be proud of our offspring for something. I see it on Facebook. I hear it when I am somewhere (sometimes at Target!) out shopping and a parent or two are congregating in the aisle (usually blocking it and making passage impossible for those of us who are actually shopping). I wonder if bragging on their children has that same backfire effect on those parents as what I experience. Just a few days ago I was bragging to Reiss's occupational therapist about the wise choices Reiss made while we were in the play area of a local fast food place that we had just visited before his therapy appointment. He had told some other boys he did not want to play with them because they were being too mean. So, of course, right as I stood there bragging, he and Milla were crashing toy bulldozers into the walls and ramming them into one another as hard as they possibly could. Irony? No, just idiocy on my part. And reliability on their part. Thanks for the backfire, kids. Love you!

Or, here's another example of one of my bragging backfires. It never, ever fails that on every occasion when I brag and go telling someone "Reiss has not had a seizure in ...... days/weeks/months. Yeah, I think we have this whole seizure thing nipped in the bud" that his rebel neurons will fire all wrong and within 48 hours of my bragging, there it is, eyes rolled to one side of the head, convulsions, loss of bowels, vomiting...the whole nine yards which usually also include me sitting there like a blithering idiot, crying my eyes out and wondering why my child has to go through such an ordeal. Better yet, why any child has to go through such an ordeal. So did I hesitate even an inkling just last Tuesday when I crossed my fingers and knocked on wood and proudly declared Reiss having been seizure-free for six full months? No, I did not. And sure enough, last Thursday evening Reiss had a seizure. And again this morning too. I wonder how long before I will start bragging again.

How about this one: I can accurately predict, almost to the hour, how long after I clean a toilet in this house that someone will make a fouler than foul, commode-clogging, skid-marking number two visit to the bathroom. Have I learned my lesson? Nope, I just keep cleaning these bathrooms. One of these days, I am going to figure out how to use that prediction skill to my benefit.

Speaking of airing my dirty laundry....I try to keep up with the laundry by washing at least one load per day. This doesn't always happen and often I may go enough days without turning the washer on that the carts are overflowing. But one thing I can count on is the fact that once I get back into that washing-drying-folding groove and everything gets caught up we will have a day of potty accidents. Or an unusually large number of clothes changes because of food spills, bloody noses, or, in Milla's case, sometimes just because she changes her mind. She is, after all, a girl. It's like a conspiracy against me with the laundry carts demanding to be fed. I should just let them continue to overflow and their demands to be refilled will disappear. Maybe then we won't have so many food spills, Reiss's puzzling issue of bloody noses will be solved, and Milla won't have the option to change clothes every hour because she won't have any clean clothes to change into. The laundry carts will stay full and there will be peace and harmony and dirty clothes abound. Note to self: Stop doing laundry. Problems solved.

For the last several months, I have had a goal to mop the kitchen floor on Sunday night or Monday day. It gets cordless vacuumed daily...or perhaps, I should say hourly - almost. Here's another area when I can almost accurately predict when and where a large mess is going to happen. Usually within four hours of post-mopping I am cleaning up a spilled drink, an exceptionally messy snack, or some other form of splat on our newly shining floor. This past week Sunday came and went, Monday came and went, and so went the entire week until Friday when I finally got around to mopping the kitchen floor at around 10am. Should I have been surprised when Reiss, at around 12:45 (well within our four-hour post-mopping window) and in a moment of me not paying attention for all of thirty seconds at most, disappeared into the garage without my notice and retrieved a bottle of wood glue and then proceeded to spill half of it onto the clean floor? No, I shouldn't have been surprised. But I was. There it was, good old reliability. And my idiocy in not seeing what was coming.

In summing things up, I think what really needs to happen is I should stop feeding my family marked down filet mignon, terminate all bragging about my kids, and cease all housecleaning efforts around here. Seems easy enough, right? Lessons learned. Now I'm off to tackle a load of laundry before hitting the hay....