Have you ever met those types of people that are so put together all the time - not a hair out of place, always wearing cleaned, crisply-pressed clothing, make-up never smeared, house always spotless with a place for everything? Yeah, well, I have and I am definitely NOT one of them.
I probably shouldn’t admit this, (although I have in other blogs) but I think nothing of rolling out of bed, (and yes, I have actually rolled and fallen out of bed) and going as is to the deli/friend’s house/Home Depot/pick-up-my-kids-wherever-they-may-be. I have gone out of the house with the previous night’s mascara smudged all over my eyes and I enjoy wearing my leopard slippers to 7-11. It’s just me; I can’t help it. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I just accept that I’m sloppy; it’s too much of a hassle gettin’ coiffed all the damn time. Let me add that my house suffers from that same state of disarray that I suffer from, too. And because of that, I don’t want anyone coming over. (Well, only my very closest besties who know me, understand me and who still love me for some mysterious reason).
But then there’s that teeny, tiny one percent of the time when something strange and unfamiliar comes over me. Sometimes it’s caused by something as simple as walking into someone else’s home and feeling envious of they’re organizational skills. Other times it’s only after I’ve tripped/slipped/banged up parts of my body which always results in deep, dark, painful bruises that I decide it’s time for a change. But the other day, it was when a friend wanted to come by (one who does not yet fully know me, one who does not yet completely understand me, and one who of course because of the previous two, can not yet love me), that I decided it's time. It still remains a mystery to me why I bother to try though. I'm way too long in the tooth to change but, shit, one more time wouldn't kill me.
Yesterday, my entire lunch hour was spent buying cleaning supplies and I went home armed with a plan. Damn it, I was going to be organized to some degree even if it was to the smallest degree ever. I would eventually open my rickety old door and welcome people in without turning even slightly pink with embarrassment. When someone asks me if I have a toothpick, I will know exactly where they are! (Note to self: buy toothpicks). If someone needs a fork, they will be in the drawer, cleaned, dried and with all its other little fork friends in its little fork-shaped space and not mixed up with the wrong crowd of sharp knives. Paper and pen, you say? In that drawer over there, and yes, the pen has ink AND a cap. That was the plan. WAS.
When I got home I lugged all my cleaning supplies into the house. After I banged myself on the box of stuff in the entryway (one day, I will call it the foy-yay), I felt the rush of excitement that only the thought of possible unclutteredness could bring. I was feelin' it.
First, I decided to get dinner done AND the dishes so I started to make meat sauce for my son and meatloaf for tomorrow with the extra bit of cow I have left over. Popped that into the oven while stirring the meat on the stove. I got out a pot to boil water for the ziti. Damn, I thought, I’m on a roll. I figured I'd make my brisket and get that done, as well. So, I grabbed my trusty old glass Pyrex dish and put it on the stove because I had no counter space. Shoulda known everything was going too smoothly....
BOOOOOOOMMMMMM!
The entire glass baking dish exploded all the fuck over, knocking my can of sauce (no comments, please. I’m a Jew and don’t make real ‘gravy,’ people. Baby steps......) Glass everywhere: in the meat sauce, in every crevice of the stove, all over the counters, floors, in the dining room carpet, and of course a piece had to take a chunk out of my foot.
Sauce everywhere, including my brand new, on-sale, light-colored capris, and blood just running out of the gaping fucking hole in the top of my foot. I tried to look at it but I thought I saw bone and decided outta sight, outta mind and covered it with 12 cotton balls.
Fast forward past the ex husband coming over to possibly take me for stitches, (but shrugging it off when I asked if he thought I needed a few); past my besties coming over to make sure I wasn’t gonna lose my foot or pass out from loss of blood, past my poor, usually-non-helpful-but-struggling-to-sweep-up-sauce son, past my daughter asking too many questions as usual.... I thanked God again that nobody lost an eye from flying glass (or a foot). When I finally hobbled off to bed all throbbing and full of bacitracin, my house was still a fuckin’ wreck.
All I can say is that one percent will always be a lost cause because I will always be a fucking disaster.
God Bless My Mess.
