Can You Feel The Love

I kiss Mike on the lips and say Bye. I kiss Shael on the lips and say Bye. I tell them both to have a good day. And off they go. Then Shael comes back and grabs something off the table. Then Mike comes back in and gets his phone that he left on the love seat. But, finally, they are off. To leave me in some peace and quiet. Wednesday and Thursday of this week I took Shael to school myself, which means leaving the house earlier than normal. I've been having to do the laundry in the evenings instead of the mornings and that throws my whole day off. Nothing serious, but I feel like I'm missing a beat. Remember in Pretty In Pink where Iona tells Andie this story of this woman she knows who has everything she ever wanted, house, husband, kids, and one day she feels like something is missing. She checks her purse, counts her kids and suddenly it occurs to her what's missing. Nothing. Nothing is missing. She attributes it to skipping the prom.

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No weekend has ever been looked forward to more than this one. Enough of the dramatics, already. I need some rest. Or some fun. Either one, I'm game. Shael's science fair is history, that's good. No more rushing around for that.

The dog is still at the vet, I have to call this afternoon to see if he's going to be able to come home tonight. I'm thinking he probably won't. When I took him back in Wednesday, the vet said that his leg either hadn't healed up at all or had rebroken and would now never heal up. The vet said that at a certain point, bones will not fuse no matter how much time is given them. Rosco had passed that point. So, as much as I hated to do it, I told the vet to amputate. That really was the only option. I really wish I would have known at the beginning that it wouldn't heal because it would have been way cheaper just to have them amputate to begin with. I never did tell Mike how much either time cost. I just don't want to get into that fight. I've been paying for it out of my own check, he's not had to pay one red cent. He asks me and I won't tell him. Wednesday night I told him I was going to be like the Army: Don't ask Don't tell.

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I had to go into the "nasty zone", Shael's bedroom and bathroom to gather up dirty clothes for the laundry this morning. When I was a kid, all five of us shared one bathroom. My Mom nagged us three kids to within an inch of our lives about certain bathroom etiquettes. #1. ALWAYS hang the hand towel back on the rack straight. Not wadded up. Not on the side of the sink. If you did it wrong, she would holler at you to come look at something and you'd find her standing in the bathroom staring at the offending towel not in it's designated place. And it had to be on the rack even, too. #2. Boys/Men had to put the seat down after they peed. She trained my brother to do this when she potty trained him, so this really wasn't ever a problem in our house. When I came along, the girls outnumbered the boys. I never experienced the seat being left up until I joined the Wilkinson clan. I've had to retrain my hubby, but, I did an excellent job. (Actually, I think it was the 6 months we had to live with my parents when we first got married that did it, because he hangs that hand towel up straighter than I do, sometimes. I think he might even get his level out sometimes. And he Never leaves the seat up on the toilet) #3. After getting out of the shower, always slide the shower curtain closed, never leave the tub exposed. This, for some reason, has escaped Mike's ability, so every morning when I get up I close the shower curtain. #4. Always hang your wet bath towel over the shower curtain rod. And reuse it the next day or two. Mike does do this, I must confess. He never leaves wet towels on the floor. But, he refuses to use a towel more than once. What I do to make up for this is use his towel every morning when I take my shower. At least the towels get used twice before they get washed. #5. Always replace the empty toilet paper roll with a new one. Once again, Mike is very learned in this. He does a fine job of replacing the empty roll with a new one.

Okay, now on to the "nasty zone". I have failed in my resposiblities to teach Shael these five bathroom etiquettes. She has her own bathroom so I don't notice it as much as I would if it were in my own bathroom. Hand towel? What hand towel? I'll hang one in there and five minutes later it's gone. Either on the floor in the bathroom, or on the floor in her bedroom, or sometimes even on the floor in the hallway. Either way, it's always on the floor. I don't have to worry about the toilet seat being put down, it's the flushing that doesn't get done in her bathroom. Gross! And closing the shower curtain? Shoot, I shouldn't have even bothered hanging a shower curtain up. She takes mostly baths anyway. It's usually found wadded up on one side or the other and the only time it gets closed it when I clean the bathroom and close it. And wet towels hanging on the shower rod never gets done in Shael's bathroom. I find wet towels behind her bathroom door, behind her bedroom door, in her bedroom on the floor, in her bedroom on her bed (Dr. Seuss talking here) in the kitchen in front of the sink, in the kitchen in front of the washing machine (preferred) and sometimes even in the floor of the living room, the floor of my bedroom or even on my bed. The toilet paper roll issue. She won't even keep it on the roll to hang up, she wants it sitting on her sink. Why? I've no idea. To make sure it gets wet when she plays in the water, I guess. Or to accidentally brush it off into her unflushed toilet, maybe? I don't know. But sometimes I wonder if she even wipes because she doesn't go through toilet paper very fast.

I have failed, haven't I? I will try harder in the future to teach her some things. Some basics like, don't bring 20 books and 15 videos into the bathroom. You can't possibly read that many books at once and you don't even have a TV or a VCR in there so why bring the videos?

One of the days I took her to school this week, I knocked on her door to tell her something and she came to the door without her glasses on and looked at me with those big blue-grey eyes surrounded by the long curly black lashes and said "What?" It nearly took my breath away. Why, she's beautiful! At that moment, the big globs of blue toothpaste in her sink and the trashy bathroom and bedroom didn't matter a bit. They were utterly forgotten. This was my daughter, created from mine and Mike's bodies, standing in front of me, fairly an inch taller than me, looking as fresh as the morning with that splash of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Freckles that some guy is going to want to bathe with kisses in a few years. He better be worthy, is all I can say.