It’s been just over one week since Monica showed up and I can hardly recognize my own house. It’s amazing what a broom, vacuum cleaner, a mop, a scrub brush, water, pine-sol, sponges, and a small coffee table cover can do for the looks of a house. When one of the teachers came over for dinner last night, she said, “Monica, the house looks great!” How dare she assume that Monica is solely responsible for the new look of the house. Did she consider that after seven months, I decided to change my feng shui so I could feel more at peace?
Monica has made it look more like a home instead of what I was living in. I tend to think of my living style as efficient minimalism. Those boots are in the middle of the dining room because I may need to wear them one of these days. The reason they’re on the table is because I can easily find them in the dark. The reason my dirty socks are on the table is because I’m lazy.
Being an efficient minimalist isn’t for everyone as I’ve observed. I think that doubling the clothes drier as my dresser drawer is genius. My lovely wife thinks of it as being lazy. I’ve heard that the line between lazy and genius is very narrow. She is using the washer much more frequent than I usually do. Her reason was, “When I find clothes on the floor I wash them”. I can’t really find any fault with her reasoning, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree.
But I know that I can’t fight the overwhelming change that is happening. She has two more weeks here until I get the house to myself again. I have to pick and choose what things I want to keep as they are and which ones to allow her to change. I think the going rate is I get to keep one for every ten Monica gets to change. So I have to really think if it’s worth it to fight for the control of the toaster settings or if I should save that fight for something more important, like whose iPod gets to stay connected to the stereo.
Monica has been able to witness some spring storms while she’s here. She walked to school in a blizzard on Thursday because her husband forgot to call and tell her not to come. We did have plans for dinner with the principal, who lives next door to the school, but we decided that I had better head home after school because of the storm. When Monica walked into the classroom at 3:30, I had to tell her we were making the half-mile walk back right then. A one-mile blizzard walk only makes her stronger. That’s what I told her. I will not repeat what she told me because I know some of her family reads this blog and I don’t want them to think that their little flower was capable of such vulgarity.
Well, I hope she takes the winter with her when she heads south. The snow outside my classroom has reached the roof of the school, so I have no outside light now. This also allows easy access to the roof for the kids. I get to yell at kids to quit running in the halls, spit out their gum, and to get off the roof. Now, if Monica can fix the feng shui in my classroom, it may improve my aptitude as a teacher.
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