Chores and Chairs.

In case you were wondering where I disappeared to...the local pool opened!

I have been busy acquiring skin cancer, and admiring my cellulite dimpled thighs.

Here is what I have learned in the first week or so of summer.
Dirty dishes can no longer be left in the sink overnight.
Milk from the cereal bowls will rot and curdle instantly and stink up the entire house. To the point of gag.
I will be honest.
Loading up dirty dishes is my least favorite chore.

I have issues.
I have issues with "used" food.
I can't touch it.
It makes me cringe and completely grosses me out.
I feel like the "used" food gets trapped underneath my fingernails, and stays-germing it up under there.
The smell.
Ugh.
So the dishes get ignored a lot around here.
I leave them there, hoping someone else will do them.
Like an optimistic moron.
Because reality is, no one else around here seems to notice a darn thing.
My family will sit watching TV in a hovel of filth, and they are fine with that.
So, I usually get stuck doing those dishes, and every hour I let them sit...fermenting in the sink...just adds to my own personal hell.

I do, however, like to vacuum.

I love the look of the carpet afterwards, in neat, straight lines.
I get a strange satisfaction in sucking up small wrappers, barbie shoes, or popcorn kernels.
I love emptying out the vacuum canister, and dumping out ALL THAT CRAP.
Crap that was living in my carpet.

So I have learned this summer, that it is best to try to do all the chores before we head over to the pool.

But then I am taking the risk that I might not get a pool lounge to sit on.
You have to get to the pool pretty early in the morning to get a non-broken pool lounge around these parts.
It is serious business.
I have watched stay-at-home-mom fist fights break out over the lounge chairs.
I have witnessed small children tossed like footballs, when the pool doors opened, and used to "hold" chairs.

I have seen grown women peeing their "territory."
The pool lounge chairs are a serious commodity.
If you don't get there when the pool opens, you are stuck with a lounge chair that either (a) will not recline, (b) only has three legs and must therefore be propped up on one side with a flip-flop, (c) is missing slats, and must be stuffed with towels or the dreaded (d) no lounge chair at all.
Then you are relegated to the hard, bare, cement- where you have to precariously place yourself and all of your belongings to avoid the random rivulets of water drippage from other (lucky lounge chair) patrons.
It is not a good time.
If you watch like a hawk, (from below on the cement) you can sometimes snag a lounge chair as someone leaves, but like I said, you look away for one second, and it will be claimed by someone else quicker on the draw.

I have also learned that damp clothing cannot be left in the back of the van.
Smells worse than the sink dishes.

Summers give me anxiety.