To Clean Or Not To Clean

You'd have thought I'd asked for a kidney.

"It's summer!"

"We're OFF!"

"We'll never see our friends if we are always working like slaves!"

Really? Tell me about always working. Try having an actual job (OK, now might not be the best time to be making this argument...) and cleaning the entire house, and cooking everyday, and keeping two kids alive, not to mention two seriously ungrateful cats!

I tell them I am sticking to my guns. They can win or they can lose. And lose big. Because if they don't do these things, and I have to, not only do they not get paid, they have to wait around for me to finish doing them before we go out and have fun, or I drive them to see the friends they could barely tolerate during the school year but now must see everyday or cease to breathe.

Hil's wheels are churning. Somehow she can spin this to her advantage. Do Pat's chores. Collect his dough.

Pat is considering his options. He is wondering if I'd give him money even if he did nothing, simply to  give him the means and a reason to turn off the video games and leave the house.

They look over their lists. You'd have thought they included things like taxidermy and sewage treatment. Would it kill Hil to have to swish a little bleach around in the toilet once a week? Will Pat turn to stone for having to empty and refill the kitty litter boxes on deadline for trash day?

Perhaps.

"Eeewww. I'm not doing that. Pat poops in that toilet," argues Hil, who is well aware of our one-bathroom house situation.

"So do you," I say. "And I have always cleaned it. And let's be honest. No one but me seems to be even remotely concerned with accuracy."

Pat is not grossed out, though smells are rarely a boy's worst problem. "But Mooooooooooommmmm!" There's TWO kitty litters! And one of them is aaaaaaallllll the way upstairs."

"How about I move it into your room? Will that make it more convenient?"

We have a philosophical difference of opinion regarding bed making.

"Why make the bed? We just get back in and mess it up later."

And my favorite, "Dad doesn't make his bed."

I'd like to argue that Dad grew up in squalor and slept on a couch purchased from the Salvation Army for the first 8 years of his life and couldn't properly make a bed if his soul's salvation depended upon it. But I don't. "Beds get made or you don't get paid. And if I get to them first, there's no excuse. Better make them while they're still warm."

We are only a few items into the list.  It's going to be a long meal.