This is how a bit of my morning went. Not all of it. This is after I fed the kids breakfast, and the cats, and the one dog who’s still technically a puppy who needs to be fed twice a day instead of once like the others.

It’s almost 11 o’clock in the morning. The kids want a snack while watching some show on Netflix. They specifically want Cheetos and I tell them we’re out of Cheetos so I go get some ketchup-flavored french fries from Trader Joe’s that are actually really good that it takes some effort on my part to not take a piece because it’s not yet noon and I’m still fasting. I take the bowls of fries to them and they make that face that they don’t like it, you know, that half sneer, half disgust look.

I tell them again, “But we’re out of Cheetos! You don’t like this one?”

Pia goes, “I do, but…” And pushes the bowl away.

Gah!

Lief asks, “How about puffs??”

I stare back at him for a second, pause, not moving. I give in and turn around to walk out of the room.

I head back to the kitchen and Leif chases after me saying he has to go pee and asks me if I can wash him after he goes. Little bells ring in the back of my head. Why does he need to be washed? Does that mean he already tinkled in his pants and he knows that he’s done that and, more importantly, that he smells??? So I follow after him to the bathroom, help him get his pants down, and lift the toilet seat up for him to pee. He says something about something being gross but I have no idea what he’s talking about and I honestly don’t care right now so I just say, “Nothing is gross, Leif. It’s just pee.”

After he finishes, he bends down to pull up his underwear and pants, front strands of his long hair almost touching the edge of the toilet bowl and I hold my breath, watching, hoping that it doesn’t. It does not.

He looks up at me and says, “I change my mind. I don’t need you to wash me.”

He starts walking out of the bathroom but I’m right by the door and stop him, suspicious, “Are you sure? Did you pee in your pants earlier???”

Because he’s done that. He gets lazy and doesn’t want to stop whatever it is he’s doing and he’ll just go in his fucking pants and leak onto the couch. He shakes his head no, but his eyebrows go up, saying yes. Hah! He can’t even lie straight! I squat and pull his undies down and sniff. Of course, it smells like pee.

I pull his bottoms off and go down to the laundry room to get him clean clothes out of the dryer. As the light goes on when I walk in, the first thing I see is a huge pool of bright yellow, almost orange piss, right by the corner of the washing machine. Huge. I was like, what the heck!!! I just stood there staring down at the floor, assessing the mess, the splashes shiny in the light that went beyond the large circle of pee. I had a quick out-of-body experience where I saw myself looking down, motionless, eyes wide, shocked at all the crap I had to clean up. I know I stood there for a good few seconds trying to figure out where to even start cleaning. I had a quick vision in my head of dumping all the dogs at the shelter and imagined that light feeling of having a huge weight lifted off of me. Not going to happen, I know, but it would be nice for a hot minute.

I had bags of clean cat litter on the floor nearby and the pee had flowed under besides going under the damn washing machine as well. “Oh my godddd!!” I screamed again, before bitching some more under my breath as I turned to look for the roll of paper towel. I mopped up the pee with paper towel after paper towel, then sprayed on some disinfectant cleaning stuff and wiped the floor off again and again until it was dry. I made sure to tuck paper towels under the washer to absorb as much pee as I could get before moving it aside to wipe down some more.

You know what happens when you move something that hasn’t been moved in ages, right? Yup. You see more shit you need to clean, sweep, dust, or pick up. So then I did that. Even got behind the washer and dryer, shimmying the huge, heavy cubes back and forth to get more crap from underneath and wiggled both back into place again. I then decided to clean out the cat litter box (because why not?) and of course I spill a bunch of cat litter on the floor so had to sweep that up and move the trash bin out of the way since litter had gotten everywhere. I finally put away the bags of litter then washed my hands, thinking to myself, “Well, at least I ended up with a real clean laundry room floor.”

Satisfied at how neat the laundry room looked, I suddenly remembered what I came down to do in the first place. I grabbed Leif’s clothes out of the dryer and headed back upstairs. Leif runs up to me, bottom half-naked, still needing to be washed. I set him up in the bathroom sink and soap him while he holds his shirt up with both hands so it doesn’t get wet.

He then asks, “Mom, can you scratch my leg? It’s itchy!”

I look up at his reflection in the mirror and follow his gaze down to his leg. “Here?” As I scratch the side of his left thigh.

“No, on the left!” And I don’t even think he knows what left is but I guess correctly when I move to scratch the inside of his thigh, same leg. He gets a calm, funny dog-like look on his face, as I get the right spot. “It was itchy Mom, thanks!”

After getting him in to fresh clothes, I went about getting them the damn puff snacks they demanded. You know, I don’t recall either one of them saying thank you…