How Things Work At Our House

This is how things work at our house.

For the past month, an extremely fat raccoon has been living high on the hog by eating out of our trash cans. We know that he is fat and that there is only one because we've seen him. I personally think that he's eaten whatever competition he had. When I said "raccoon" and "trash" I'm sure a visual popped into your head -- well, triple the mess that was in your head. After a couple of weeks of cleaning up after the raccoon, we actually started taking anti-raccoon measures like putting big landscaping bricks on top of the lids. That worked for a week until the raccoon figured out how to push the trash cans over so that the bricks would fall off, and we were back to square one. Then Joe started putting bungee cords on the lids to keep them on -- that just made the raccoon angry. On Thursday morning, the trash cans were turned over with the lids still intact, but one of them had been rolled all the way around to the side of the house and the edges of the garbage bags that had been showing underneath the lids were in tatters. By Friday morning, the raccoon had figured out how to get the bungee cords off -- not sure how, but he did. It was the worst mess ever.

Just in case you had us up on a pedestal (stop laughing) and lest you think Flamingo Joe and I have a perfectly harmonious relationship all the time (now even I'm laughing) -- we have an ongoing argument, always simmering beneath the surface, of who is responsible for cleaning up trash (or dog poo or vomit, kid or dog variety). I think the man of the house should be responsible for cleaning up trash (or dog poo or vomit, kid or dog variety) because even if your wife is not the delicate flower she once was, you should at least make her think that you think she is by not letting her sully her porcelain hands with trash (or poo or vomit). Seriously, why doesn't he love me enough to clean up the trash (or poo or vomit) without getting me involved?

Flamingo Joe's way of thinking on this matter goes something like this: "Get your butt off the couch and help me." FJ's a man of few words that usually get right to the point.

Grandma and I both have done our share of cleaning up after the raccoon this past month, so Flamingo Joe hasn't had too much to complain about. But Friday morning's mess was, I believe, the worst so far, and as I am heading out to take the boys to school, I remark in passing to Flamingo Joe (who is cleaning up the new mess), "I think it's time to move the trash cans underneath the house." Meaning (in case you are a man and are reading several levels of condemnation in that simple statement) -- let's put the trash cans behind a door so that the raccoon can't get to them. This, however, is what FJ heard, "Man-who-has-failed-to-defend-your-home-and-family-by-not-keeping-monster-racoon-out-of-the-trash-thus-reflecting-poorly-on-your-manhood, you should clean out the front bay of our storage area, take out all the bins that are stored there, figure out what's in them, try to get your wife who never lifts a finger to help you to go through the bins and throw things away, rearrange the entire storage area in 30 degree weather and then put the trash cans underneath the house so that the raccoon cannot get into them."

I was going to snap a picture of the contents of our storage bay piled out in front of the house at 7:00 last night, but I didn't want to attract Flamingo Joe's attention to the fact that not only was I not helping and not going through the bins (why am I going to go through bins to see what can be brought upstairs when I've stored them in the bins underneath the house because I didn't want them up in the house?), but I was also leaving with Desiree to go to a girls' night out thing at a friend's house and wouldn't be back until after 9:00.

That's how things work in our house.

Yes, we need counseling.

But, while he was going through bins, Flamingo Joe found a journal I kept when Casey was Mace's age. At 2 1/2 Casey was speaking in full sentences and correcting his own grammar -- unlike Mace, who Desiree says sounds like he's from a foreign country and just learning the language here ("Me birthday party?"). Here is an excerpt from the journal: "Casey watched an episode of Franklin today where Franklin was helping build a dam to keep the water out of Beaver's house. So tonight, Casey starts talking about building a dam. He found a coffee thermos that he was using as some kind of tool, but he was calling it his "dam thing." As in, "Where is my dam thing?" and "I use my dam thing to build it." And "I have to go to the dam store to get my dam thing." Joe thought it would be better if he encouraged Casey to say "beaver dam" instead of just "dam." But then Casey kept leaving off the "dam" part and would say, "I need more beaver" and "I'm going to get beaver at the beaver store." Really, not much better." As I recall, Casey forgot all about beaver dams by the next day when we had a play date, which was lucky for me. I had quit my job by that time and was trying to make new friends among Casey's friends' moms at his preschool -- it doesn't make a good impression on people when your kid teaches them how to curse and use sexual innuendos.