One Saturday in July...

<This is not my story - it was shared with me by a member of MWDAS, and I have permission to publish it>
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I ran away from home today. Truly, I did, and I am proud of it.  It apparently did the trick, got the message across, worked wonders.

My house was clean for the entire time DH was gone on his business trip. Now, I'm not gonna go so far as to say it was so clean my mother-in-law could've shown up unannounced and I'd've been okay with it. But the first floor clutter was under control, the kitchen didn't look like something from a crack whore's apartment and the floors were clean. Second floor was...tolerable. With DH gone for a week, I had put away the cursed-and-blasted ironing board that he leaves up because he irons every morning, so the loft felt a bit less cluttered and claustrophobic. 
 He even commented, upon his return, how clean the house was. Says I, "yes, it's been that way since you left on Sunday" because I do know that subtlety is lost on the male.  In the <less than a> week since he's been home, it's all gone to shite.

Since during the week I tend to stay up the latest at night, and get up first in the morning, I like to sleep in of a Saturday morning. This one was no exception.  After we'd gone out to dinner as a family, I'd frittered my Friday evening away in front of my boyfriend, confidante and lover, the gaming machine in the Mom Cave. I went to bed somewhere between 11 and midnight and luxuriated in my bed till 9.30 or so (as much as one can luxuriate when cats are using one's bed as an obstacle in Olympic cat racing).  I showered, completed my morning toilette and ventured to the living level for blessed caffeine, sacrament of all geeks and gamers.  The kitchen looked like a frat party had taken place. Now, that would be fine with me if the result had been some young stud next to me when I awoke, but no. No, dear hoors, the result was simply an appalling display of dead Corona bottles blocking my access to the God of The Morning, my Keurig coffee machine.  I chose to push them aside, make a large chocolate flavored mug with tasty creamer and disappear to the subterranean depths where the destruction could not be readily observed. I took with me hostages in the form of three Tylenol Arthritis tablets, which I did consume in anticipation of being primped and prodded about my joints by my nail technician.

When the caffeine had worked it's magic, and the clock said it was nigh on time to leave for said nail attention, I ventured upward to dispose of my caffeine carrier and I looked - really LOOKED - at the disaster that was the living level of this place.  Dishes in the sink, because no one 'felt like' unloading the dishwasher.  Bottles queued up like they were trying to get tickets to see Madonna. A pan... a friggin' CHICKEN FRYER...in the middle of the kitchen floor with a scant showing of water in it - something is leaking?  Cereal bag out of it's box, on the microwave cart, an incident just waiting to happen, dontcha know. Grapes on the table, a milk bottle - still 2/3 full of milk - on the counter because someone who is not an adult decided it was 'bad'. Cats not fed, dining table and coffee table covered with what I refer to as 'male debris', shoes and cat toys intermingled, in an evil conspiracy to trip and maim.  What did I do? you ask.  Well, I did what any women prone to violent outbursts did.  I told the youngest male to clean up his breakfast mess (3x, no less, to anguished cries of "I KNOW!!"). put on my shoes, and left for my nail appointment.  Some insane part of me was channeling Scarlett O'Hara thinking "Tomorrow is another day" except it was "They will take care of it while I'm gone."  Did I mention I suspect I'm delusional. Yea. That.

So when I came home, and DH's car was gone, I thought "Ah! They are out for haircuts." and sauntered into my home. While I didn't expect to find immaculate environs, I did expect, at the very least some improvement. I was far more delusional that I originally thought.  Kitchen - same.  Okay, thinks I.  I will tackle this after I pee.  And after I sort the mail I carried in. So over the trash, I sort the mail till I'm left with papers for recycling and the 'stuff to keep' pile.  I take 'stuff to keep' into the dining room to see if I have more 'stuff to keep' to add to it, and what do I find??? Oh c'mon guess!!  That's right!  I find the cereal bowl, grapes, and cereal box that I had asked be put away (and been verbally abused about in the process) still sitting on the dining table.  Not A Happy Mama.  No Sirree.  So I move to the bathroom. Still gotta pee, gonna think about what Spawn will need to do to make up for leaving all that stuff out when he left.

<HEREWITH BEGINS THE DISGUSTINGNESS OF BOYS - You have been warned>

I walk in to the downstairs bath to pee, 'cause you know I can't run the sink in the kitchen without peeing first or I'll wet myself. And there is the lid up - and the bowl full of ...everything INCLUDING cigarette butts, and a magazine on the counter so I don't know if I should blame the adult who reads Consumer Reports in the can or the kid who is most likely to NOT flush after taking a dump.  I flush.  I pee.  I send a scathing text while my blood pressure shoots through the roof.  I grab a book off the bookshelf, my keys, my purse and I leave.  The time is approximately 12.30pm. I leave for a park, where I can find shade and read and not see what DH has done to my formerly clean house in the space of a week. A week in which we were not there for at least ten hours a day.

I get a response from my text when they get home:  "we are on it."  Damn well better be, thinks I.  I sit in the shade at a park and I read; later, I go out to lunch.  I eat bacon and ice cream, albeit not together, to make myself feel better.  I read while doing so.  I text a friend from my phone.  At about 2.45 I get another text. "safe to come home now. sorry"

I don't rush. I don't see a need to.  I dawdle over Almond Joy ice cream and cute college age waitresses (ah! to be young again!).  I wander home, reluctantly. The kitchen is spotless. The floors vacuumed. The clutter picked up. Cat toys and shoes in their proper places. All that remains is the litterbox...my turn anyway, so I do that.  I encounter Spawn upstairs.  "Did your father tell you how unhappy I was to find poop in the toilet?"  "Yes," he says, smirking. The smirk pisses me off.  "It's not funny." I say, "so get out here and make your bed and put away your clean clothes and don't smirk at me when I'm unhappy with you.  And by the way? Your closet needs to be cleaned. Do that, too."

Once I had been home long enough for DH to decide I wasn't going to eat anyone, he started to tic off what they had done.  I stopped him, "Yes, it looks good. It looked good last Sunday too, and the idea that it could be clean for one whole week then turn into a shithole the next is what pissed me off. It's easy enough to keep it clean when everyone picks up after themselves."  His lame response was, "I was going to clean it today, I just didn't get to it before you got back."  Horseshit.  You sat on the couch, pinned under your laptop, until the very last second you could get to the barber for a haircut. You were up before me, you could've gotten started then. I was probably gone at least 90 minutes that you were still here and you did nothing, not even making sure things got back into the fridge that belong there, or that the toilet got flushed after use.

I think I scared 'em.  Interestingly enough, they've both left me be since I came home. I sorted laundry...washed some, dried some, folded some. Made a nice big vodka drink, DID not make any dinner. And here it is, 10pm, and no one is bothering me.