Keeping up with the Joneses

Well, I'll start off by saying I'm NOT keeping up with the Joneses. In fact, they're so far ahead of me, I may as well drop out of the race. Here's why:

A few days ago I woke up to a terrible stink in the house. My first thought was that a skunk must have sprayed the entire side of our house. I've seen a skunk (too cute to smell that bad) wander in our yard before, so it didn't worry me too much. We aired out and the house smelled better. Then, the next morning it smelled bad again. Hmmmm....did the skunk strike again? Air out, rinse, repeat. House smelled better. Closed the house up at night. Next morning? Yup, it stunk again. This was yesterday. At this point, we came to the realization (finally) that the smell was coming from inside our house, since every time we closed it up, it started to smell again. Through thoughtful and scientific experimentation (we closed the basement door by accident), we realized the smell was coming from down there. D (the big one, not the little one) searched the basement for close to an hour last night, trying to find the offending source, but to no avail. So as it stands now, we have a rotting, decaying animal (probably a giant rodent) somewhere in the bowels of our home. We have taken care of the problem by shutting the door to the basement and turning off the heat (so the smell doesn't travel through the ducts). Voila! Problem solved (sigh).

Then yesterday, one of E's friends stopped by to invite her over to play. When she came by I was nursing Little D, and my house was a MESS. And when I say mess, I don't mean I had a few things on the floor. It was a dive. Crap everywhere, laundry piling up, baby gear mountains that I swear I'd need hiking boots to get past...even though this friend was seven years old, I must admit, I was embarrassed by my house. Need I remind you, it also smelled of decaying rodent meat.

On to this morning..

I took the opportunity on this gorgeous May morning to play outside with K, while trying to nurse little D as inconspicuously as possible. I had a chance to really look around my neighborhood.

Our neighbors on one side have gorgeous landscaping. Every tree is surrounded by cute little mounds of mulch (probably ground down from Limited Edition Endangered Redwoods), and has a pile of multi-colored tulips that never want to die. Their lawn looks more like green carpet than actual living grass so much that I have been tempted (more than once) to just lie down on it...they might call the cops, though, so I've fought the temptation. For now. The neighbors on the other side have similar landscaping, except their grass is somehow even greener and lusher than the tulip house's.

Then I looked at our lawn. Our tulips are all dead. Most gave up the fight years ago when we first moved in. I could almost hear them whispering underground "Crap. It's them. Did you SEE what they did at their last place?! Let's get out of here and move across the street." So the five or six remaining loyal tulips have all since died off. In their place we have an abundant and very-much-alive family of sunny yellow flowers. Crap. I mean dandelions. Apparently, in exchange for our tulips, our neighbors sent over every single one of their dandelions. Because they have none.

I'll also give a quick shout-out to my daughter who hasn't been bathed in a week and is wearing a ghastly combination of clothing today that any decent mother would promptly remove from the house and torch.

I'd like to think that I'm the type of person that doesn't get bothered by that sort of thing. But I usually do. I want my house to be clean, and I want my lawn to be beautiful. I don't want my kids going to school looking like their mother went on strike...

But today I let it get to me. I thought about my uncombed hair, my filthy car, house, and children. I thought about the laundry I haven't done, and the terrifying death smell in my basement. And I felt crappy about it. Humbled would be a good word. I felt like a failure.

As I was standing there, pitying myself, I looked at K, who was running around in the dandelions with Scout (our dog) and giggling. And I looked down at little D and saw how content and happy he was. I realized what an idiotic, superficial, and stupid mentality it is to base my self-worth and happiness on how weed-free my yard is. While I don't want a jungle for a front yard, and I'm not about to put our 1996 Mercury Sable on blocks in the yard and use it for target practice, I realized this morning that those things simply don't matter.

Hopefully I'll get my house clean. Hopefully the dead rodent will finish decomposing and stop smelling. Hopefully I'll bathe my children a few times this summer. But for now, I'm not going to worry about it. I'm rocking my baby (who's wearing fifth-generation hand-me-downs), and babies don't keep.



...go ahead, picture me in my cutesy neighborhood, surrounded by knee-high weeds, camo cut-offs, shooting a shotgun at a Mercury Sable.