There's a rule out there for military spouses; in fact, I think it might be the Murphy's Law for military spouses.
If your sweetie deploys, something's going to break. It'll probably be something big. Like the car engine. Maybe the foundation of the house will open a gaping chasm that children and pets fall into. Or, perhaps the computer will get some new virus that causes it to send obscenity filled emails to your in-laws when their habit of pointing out the clutter in your house becomes a bit too frequent.
But of course, the big things are not the only things that band together to tweak your day.
Today I found myself trying to clean the spare bedroom. Now, the only reason we HAVE a spare bedroom is because we have four children and we bunk them up two to a room. I'm a fascist that way. I have to share a bedroom, so do they.
My children love to sneak into the spare bedroom and create chaos. They know that I am not likely to gallivant down to the end of the hall without a pressing reason that involves immediate cleaning to be done. It's a fairly safe pass time for them.
So, the utter destruction when I went back to get ready for a visit from the daughter of a single Army mom we know wasn't a surprise. I moaned and groaned. I spit. I yelled. I grounded people. But the cleaning got done.
The time came to put the sheets on and make the bed.
Remember when sheets used to come with elastic on each of the four corners? They were irritating to fold, but at least they were shaped correctly. The sheet I was attempting to put on the bed was one of the new style - two long strips of elastic on what could be either the side or top/bottom (depending on sheet brand) of the fabric.
My first attempt proved to be the wrong direction. Too much sheet here, not enough there. I rotated the thing a quarter turn... and was dumbfounded by the same problem. Now, we didn't have black baby crib sheets, so I knew the thing should fit. Maybe I had turned the sheet a half circle on accident. So I rotated another quarter.
Nope.
I took the sheet off the bed and shook it. I held it at an arm's length and tried to visually measure it. I adjusted it. I tried to put it on the bed.
It didn't fit.
This was just too much. So far, I had invested nearly half an hour in trying to put a stupid sheet on a stupid bed. I growled and tried again.
It wouldn't fit.
I tried every single quarter turn. None of them worked. That sheet did not want to go on the guest bed. By this time over an hour had passed. I was red, sweaty, and ready to stab the sheet into oblivion. In a fit, I stomped out of the room and attacked the build up on the toilet bowl in my bathroom.
When I returned to the spare room after a few hours of cooling down, I saw a neatly made up bed, complete with black fitted sheet. Apparently my eight year old was trying to help out.
It was sweet, and it did help out with the cleaning. But my sanity? Some days are just a loss.
