I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking, will the Grownup Girl EVER stop writing about how she is tired, over-houseworked, underpaid, etc?

I’m thinking the same thing, dear, dear readers.

Soon, I promise, I’ll get back to those crazy kids, my crazy past and my even crazier aspirations and observations.

But um… just for now… it’s literally all I can think about. I do the dishes… but then my shoes make the linoleum dirty. So now I have to mop. Again. REALLY. REALLY???

I feed the kids, the dining room floor becomes a mess again. Obviously. They are kids. And I fed them rice. And lentils. May as well have thrown a vat of rice and lentils at them, and yelled, “mouths open!”

I clean the floor of my girls’ room with the help of the expert cleaner, 5 year old Racheli. Racheli leaves to brush teeth, and just as I sigh with happiness at the sight of their carpet – by golly, I KNEW it was under there somewhere! – little Esther methodically removes every single “pretend food box” from inside the giant “shopping cart” where they had just been blessedly put away.

Honey. We need to put those back. Please. We just cleaned your floor.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

That little whippersnapper has a scream that will see and raise any paltry hand of “nails on a chalkboard.”

Racheli and I hatch a plan to clean the boxes once Esther has finished unloading them. We do so, and Esther puts them out on the floor again. She will not allow us to replace them in the cart until she is safely tucked away in bed and can’t see the durn things.

Oh – and I clean Yehuda’s room before putting him to bed. Three minutes later, he has dragged his entire bedding, stuffed animals, blankets, sheets and pillows, halfway down the hall. Bad dreams. Naturally.

And don’t even get me stated on all the pee-soaked sheets.

But the kicker… is the oven. In my bleary delirium, drying/putting away dishes while my husband washes, I accidentally opened the oven to put away a pot, thinking it was the cabinet.

What? I told you I hardly ever use the thing.

And lo and behold… the freakin Easy Off I so proudly and suffocatingly used for the first time 2 weeks ago… was STILL IN THERE. White streaks, covering EVERY INCH OF THE DAMN OVEN.

WTF???

My husband tsk-tsked… “Don’t you know you have to wipe it after spraying?”

GRRRRRRR. Like he is such the “Easy Off Expert.”

OF COURSE I WIPED THE DAMN THING! I NEARLY CHOKED WITH FUMES WIPING IT!

Though I admit, whereas I may have vigorously wiped the Easy Off, I apparently needed to also wipe the Easy Off… Off.

RRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrr.

c/xo,

Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)

Gee, Alice, how DID you keep that big house with all those kids so sparkling clean?? OH YEAH. YOU WERE JUST ACTING.