That Takes Talent...

... Earlier today, I climbed over a pile of laundry (quite literally) and landed on about 18 inches of floor space in front of the dryer. I have now determined that I could do one load of laundry every day for the rest of my life, and it would still never get done! Maybe... maybe if I did three loads!

At any rate, I opened the dryer and then realized that the empty laundry basket was on the other side of the room (not within reaching distance unless I scaled Mt. Neverest again), so I did the only reasonable thing I could think of... I yelled, "Caleb, I need your help! I'm trapped!" I specifically yelled for Caleb, because I figured he was the most likely to care that Mommy was trapped in the laundry room. My other kids would have just laughed at me, but as expected, Caleb came running! He was, however, disappointed that I wasn't locked in the closet with the washer and dryer. He really wanted a dramatic rescue, I guess... He got me the basket anyway...

And as I began to dump the clean laundry in the basket... and the wet laundry in the dryer... and the dirty diapers in the washer... I thought of Tinkerbell...

Now, humor me...

In "Tinkerbell", Tink arrives in Pixie Hollow and must determine what her talent is. Queen Clarion takes her to a circle of enticing items, and one by one Tink begins to touch them. She touches a beautiful glowing flower and it goes dim, signaling that she is not a "garden fairy". She touches a glistening blue snowflake, and it also goes dim, signaling that she is not a "snow and ice fairy". It goes on for a minute or two, and then she turns, and this hammer jumps up and glows (brighter than the fairies have ever seen) and travels straight to Tinkerbell's hands! And we learn (as does Tink) that she is a "tinker". Exciting, right? Well... not so much to Tinkerbell as she begins to discover what "tinks" do...

I kind of imagined myself, at that point, standing in the middle of a circle with all the amazing things that represent what I have wanted to do with my life during different time periods... And suddenly... out of nowhere... a huge, shiny container of "All Free Clear" comes careening toward me at the speed of light and hits me in the head... and I find out that I'm a laundry fairy! Again... exciting, right?

Now, I'm not cracking up... really... at least I don't think so...

This all came after a pretty traumatic day of house cleaning. Earlier, I went to check on the downstairs bathroom (that Grace had told me was clean). It was not clean. I followed this by checking on the upstairs bathroom (which I never should have done, because it is never clean). It was disastrous. As a side note, the master bath was clean. This is the bathroom I use...

Because I felt somewhat adventurous (and Miah was asleep upstairs) I decided to go ahead and clean the upstairs bathroom. OK... I really did this because I found a couple of ants, and it is probably a really bad idea to send your asthmatic children to shower with the mildew. I admit it.

I was thankful for Grace at this point (both my daughter and the virtue), because it must have been fairly obvious that Mommy was close to having a nervous breakdown, so Grace took all of the dirty laundry downstairs and piled it in the laundry room (which is how I ended up mountain climbing, as mentioned above). This helped us to have a clear path through the upstairs hallway, at least...

I was also thankful that in my little daydream sequence, I was not hit in the head with a toilet brush. I legitimately do not think I am a toilet cleaning fairy. But the bathroom got clean anyway...

Unfortunately, Ian destroyed the rest of the house (including Caleb's new 900+ piece Lego set that he got for his birthday and just built) while I cleaned the bathroom...

Near the end of the day, I sat down to fold the laundry (finally) and put the Tinkerbell movie in. And there was one line that really grabbed my attention. It comes when Tinkerbell is "tinkering" as opposed to trying to change her talent to be like the other fairies. Another fairy notices, in awe, what she's doing and asks, "Don't you like doing this? Isn't this really what you love?"

Yeah... I guess it is... Well, I mean, not literally the laundry... but I get it...

Come put the clothes away little fairy... and pirates...

Lisa